


The Edge

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Force Play, M/M, Rape Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 06:17:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12270609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: “Do you really think it happened?”Buffy was silent for a long time, and then confessed the real reason for her suspicion. “Now that the thought’s occurred to me, I’m having a really hard time thinking of a reason why it wouldn’t.”After a nightmare that could have been a memory, Buffy and Spike explore their sexuality, unearthing more than they’d ever been prepared to face before.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR WARNINGS!  
> This whole story is an exploration of rape fantasy and force play, largely from the female perspective. All Spuffy sex is consensual. All other situations are either past tense, or of dubious reality, or both. While these may be mitigating circumstances for some, for others they will not be, and no one who is negatively triggered by rape reference should EVER read this story!
> 
> Sex with other characters is depicted in this story, but I don't want people searching to get the wrong idea. The primary relationship is 100% Spuffy. 
> 
> My headcanon puts this story almost immediately after Pet in my own canon-compliant post-series universe, but any references thereto will be utterly oblique. Thanks to bewildered and ZabJade for betaing this sexually complex squickfest.
> 
> Stark and gorgeous banner gifted by the amazingly talented Carrie-Ann, who managed to depict "The healthy exploration of rape-fantasy" in a beautiful and evocative and absolutely stunning way. Thank you so much!

 

 

   Buffy was sleeping when the smell started to permeate her dreams enough to wake her. Something smokey and heady, sweet but sort of sickly. An incense, maybe, or... or... a spell....

   It did seem like she was sick, or drugged. She felt mostly paralyzed, but if she fought like a dog she could open her eyes. They would flicker and then flicker back, and someone... someone was in her room... someone....

   “Shh, now, darlin’,” said a voice. A velvet voice she remembered that was tainted somehow in her mind. “What are you doing with your eyes open? Here....” He brought something close to her face, something burning dimly in the pre-dawn light. “Breathe that in, now. We can’t have you waking up fully. We’ve only got a little time here.” Only a little time? Before... before what...?

   Before he had to get back underground. Because this was Angel, the man was Angel, she knew him, she loved him, she remembered him. And he wasn’t a threat, he was Angel, he was....

   But he wasn’t the same anymore. He had changed. He’d lost his soul, become evil, become.... He’d become a killer again. But he wasn’t dangerous. Not to her. He’d never hurt  _ her, _ right? For the same reason she couldn’t kill him, he hadn’t killed her. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t. He was....

   He was sliding his tongue down her body, while his hand slipped up under her nightdress. And she couldn’t raise her arms....

   She wanted to be confused about what he was doing, but it was so clear to her. He’d taken her before, and now he was taking her again, when she was helpless and paralyzed and couldn’t move. Her breath came tighter and she wanted to fight him off, because no, this wasn’t what she wanted. Not now! She tried and tried again, fighting the stupor, trying to force her body to work, but it wasn’t working... it wasn’t working....

   But it was working. She couldn’t move her body, but it was most certainly working. Because where Angel had found himself, where his tongue was, she could feel it. She felt as he pulled out her tampon, chuckling as it released her interior. Ew, gross, gross, he was after her blood as well as her...? But he licked at the blood, snacking on it, sucking harder and harder on her secret parts and she...

   No. No no no, no, it wasn’t supposed to be like this! This was what she dreamed, but it wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t... he wasn’t... Angel wasn’t the same anymore and he....

   Her body didn’t seem to be listening to anything she told it to do. She couldn’t move her arms, she couldn’t close her legs, and she couldn’t for the life of her force the feeling of swelling pleasure out of her body as Angel slathered her with his tongue. She could breathe... but that was about it. And as she breathed a tiny moan escaped with her breath, a grunt, a sigh, and Angel looked up, his chin red with her spillings, and grinned at her through pointed teeth. She saw his face in flickers as she forced her eyes open.

   “Enjoying that, Buffy? Are you?” He shifted over her bed, and he wasn’t... he wasn’t wearing.... He had pulled down his....

   The grunt she gave next was one of pain as he shoved himself inside her, as harshly as he could. She was slick because he’d made her so, but she was still young – too young for this, really – and she’d only done it the once....

   Except it didn’t feel like this had happened only the once. And she couldn’t lift her arms, and she couldn’t do more than moan, and what happened with all those other dreams of this, this, this, as Angel came night after night and stripped her and fucked her and why wasn’t she fighting him, and why wouldn’t her arms work? And he looked so beautiful over her, and then so horrible, his brown eyes yellow, his fine forehead harsh with vampiric ridges, his mouth that she so so wanted to kiss, full of evil fangs, and he pushed himself into her, pulse, pulse, pulse....

   “Are you finally going to remember this?” Angel whispered down at her. “How many nights before it dawns on you that you’ve been mine this whole time?” Pulse, pulse, pulse.... “Drusilla, she thinks it’s cute. Watching me do to you what I did to her. Break you like I did her.” Pulse, pulse....

   “Didn’t have to use magic smoke to quell  _ her _ body, though. When I came to her, all I had to do was hold her down, night after night. She was easy. So weak and human.... Not like you. But your strength can’t save you. You’re too much in love with me, and you know it.” He ground himself into her. “If you didn’t want this, you’d have figured out how to keep me out before now. You know magic. You know what I am....”

   Pulse, pulse, pulse....

   “You know you can’t keep me out.”

   Pulse. Pulse.

   “You’re mine, Buffy.  You brought me back to myself. You loved me back into what I really am. I’m going to love you right back to what you are....” He was excited now, his voice throaty with passion. “The victim you know you are...!”

   He must have come, then, because he grunted and stiffened, making a move that was almost a dive for her throat. “Not yet,” he grunted through clenched fangs. “Not... yet....” He paused and gasped for a long moment, and then smiled down at her with a look so evil she could swear her heart stopped for a moment. “Must thank you for returning me my patience. Cursed soul couldn’t ever wait for what it wanted.” He licked Buffy’s mouth with his bloodstained tongue. “I know how to draw it out now I’m myself again,” he whispered.  

   Buffy was having trouble keeping her eyes open. She tried to raise her arms again, to shove him off, but he was having none of it, and everything was so still... so heavy... so....

   He left her. His weight left her body, his sounds wandered across the room. The sun was rising, he had to go, and it was over, it was over, so... why wasn’t she glad? She wanted him back inside. She wanted him to finish her. He hadn’t done it right, he’d only taken his and left her on the edge like this... wanting it... not wanting it... hating it, loving it, wanting more, wanting it never to have happened at all....

   In a few weeks she’d wake up with his sketch of her sleeping form on her pillow. It wasn’t until the sketch of her mother that Buffy would finally instigate the disinvite, and keep Angelus out of her house. Forever, she had assumed at the time. Before that he’d still been invited... invited... into her heart, her home, her bedroom. Why had she left him invited, when she knew what he was now...?

   The door opened, he came back to her bed, his weight full beside her, his cool hand on her chest, and the touch was like a spell had been lifted. Her eyes finally opened completely, and she found herself not in her bedroom in Sunnydale in 1998, but in her own bedroom at home, the one she shared with Spike, and the body in the bed beside her was not Angel but her own boyfriend, and he’d placed his hand on her chest, on her breastbone, like he usually did when he woke her, and his cool skin felt great, and she pushed him off roughly.

   Spike held his hands up instantly, looking innocent. “Sorry, love. You were dreaming.” He smiled, his eyes soft and seductive. “Seemed hot. Thought I might step in.”

   She hadn’t been  _ dreaming _ . That wasn’t a dream, strictly speaking. It wasn’t unheard of, she knew what it was. Sleep-paralysis, Old Agnes, or the Old Hag, a demonish-dream caused by half waking, her body still paralyzed but her consciousness aware. Her mind was scared by being unable to move, and supplied the scary accompaniment to try and wake her properly. As a demon slayer she’d been called in to hunt down imaginary creatures that didn’t actually exist a few times, from victims of this perfectly human and non-supernatural phenomenon. Giles had explained it to her. She’d known about it since her high-school days.

   Which explained half of it. Not the other half.

   Spike had woken her from sexy dreams before, taking well-earned advantage of her mind supplying cheap foreplay and finishing her off with some very satisfying actual sex. She wanted this time to be different... and it didn’t feel different... and that bothered her.

   It bothered her a lot.

   She was really turned on. Just incredibly, her body flushed, her clit swollen, her pussy slippery and almost leaking. Was her period starting? It was about the right time, and the dream indicated it might be. She and Spike actually had negotiated fun ways of working with her cycle, usually after showers and with preparations beforehand. It was kinda cute how he enjoyed it, and so long as she didn’t have to look at it or taste it herself or anything it didn’t bug her. (She was a woman, and a slayer. She was used to blood, even old, impure blood.) But this thing... dreaming of Angel... and not the innocent Angel sex-dreams, but one of the ugly ones. One of the ugly ones, and very real....

   But she wasn’t there now. She wasn’t seventeen, too innocent, and sexually confused now. And Spike was hers, and he was right beside her, and he was hers. All hers.

   She grabbed him by the t-shirt and dragged him closer, pulling him into a kiss. “Mm, yeah,” she said, gripping him hard. “Do it. Do it hard.”

   She flipped him over atop her, and ooh, that was convenient, she’d slept naked. Spike had his pants down quickly and then he was inside her, and oh, good, that was good. She dragged on him, driving him in harder, more fiercely, as she flexed under him.

   “Oh, Christ,” Spike breathed as she squeezed him in every way possible. He was suddenly panting, and he hadn’t had to do much in the way of exertion yet.

   “Harder,” she breathed up at him. “Harder!”

   He wasn’t being hard enough. She put her hands between them, scrubbing at her clit as he filled her, desperate to just get that release already, she had no interest in drawing this out. She didn’t want to be feeling like this in the first place, not with how she’d gotten here.

   Except it felt good.

   Spike was staring down at her, marginally flummoxed, but game. Her hands adding friction had made it hard not to come almost instantly, and when she finally came with a desperate grunt, and he allowed himself to follow suit. That had been lots faster than he’d anticipated. He stared down at her, panting. “Fuck, Buffy,” he whispered.

   Buffy gazed up at him, her face troubled.

   “You okay?”

   “Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m fine. I just....” She swallowed.

   Spike leaned down and nuzzled her face. He would have kissed her, but she subtly turned her head away, still holding him warmly. Instead he whispered to her gently. “What’s the matter, love?”

   Buffy lay there for a moment, feeling the weight of her lover, breathing in his scent, confused by herself. But it wasn’t his fault, this thing in her head. And she had a lead where it might have come from. “I’m afraid we might have botched that spell for Dawn.”

 

***

 

   That “spell for Dawn” had been something Willow had performed the night before, after Dawn came home from one of her classes and started to cry during dinner.

   College was complicated, and she was in a psych class just like Buffy had been. They had been having a lecture on reality and perception, and one of Dawn’s classmates had confessed to the class that she’d been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia the year before. “Before anyone freaks out, yes, I take my meds, and no, even if I didn’t I’m not dangerous. Not to anyone but me, anyway.” The classmate had then gone on to explain that the freakiest part about the disorder wasn’t dogs trying to tell her to kill anyone or anything, or even weird voices or hallucinations of things jumping out at her. It was that she’d gone undiagnosed for almost a year after the hallucinations had started, and for a long time she didn’t know what had or hadn’t been real.

   The voices she’d heard and the things she’d experienced hadn’t been so different from reality, and had often taken the voices of people she knew and was living with. So in many cases, she didn’t know whether someone had said something or confessed something or if she’d just hallucinated it. She had a whole year of her life where she didn’t know whether what she remembered had happened or not.

   As Dawn had explained this story she wept into her plate as she explained, “And she didn’t... know... what... what was  _ r-real! _ ”

   Everyone had been a little confused. What was so horrible about that? It wasn’t Dawn’s problem, right? They kept asking Dawn, who couldn’t explain why she was crying about it. “I don’t know, I don’t know!” she kept saying. It was Spike who had finally sussed where Dawn’s horror was coming from.

   “Well, it’s the same as you, innit?” Spike asked Dawn when he’d realized no one had finished eating and come in to see what was what. “I get it. Dawn can’t remember what’s real, either.”

   There had been a loud, “Oooh!” in unison as the penny dropped, and then everyone had stood around in consternation as they tried to figure out what to do about it.

   “Well... I can sort that,” Willow finally said. “Easy.”

   Everyone looked at her.

   “H-how?”

   “Just a spell,” Willow said lightly.

   “Uh... Will?” Xander asked. “This isn’t one of those things where you say something’s easy, and then you do it, and it all blows up in our face later, is it?”

   “No, this one really is easy,” Willow said. “Look, the monks shoved Dawn into our memories, right? That means our original memories are still there, Dawn’s sort of overlaid over the top of them. All I need to do is go into a trance, find the place where all our overlays match, and that’s the point where Dawn got put in for reals. There’s enough of us here who remember Dawn to triangulate a memory point.”

   “A-and I’d know when I came, then?” Dawn asked. “We’d know what was real?”

   “Of course.”

   “There’s no way this could erase our memories of her, could it?” Buffy asked. “Because I want those memories. I love my Dawn memories.”

   “No, I wouldn’t be touching them, just looking at them,” Willow said. “I mean, some other memories might come up, too, because when you shine a light on anything it looks shinier, but mostly we’ll just know exactly when the Dawn memories came in.”

   “Well, we know when it was  _ roughly _ , right?” Xander asked. “Can’t we just look then? It was about the start of your second year of college, wasn’t it?”

   “Yeah, that helps, but you want to know _ exactly _ , right?”

   “Yeah....”

   “So, it would help if you all looked at just about everything you remember. Free associate. The truth will rise up as you do it.”

   “You won’t be reading our memories completely, right?” Xander asked. “I have a few secrets in there.” 

   Everyone looked at him, instantly suspicious. 

   “Hey, look, no one wants to know my favorite sex position, do they?” 

   “Anya already told everyone,” Dawn said with a tearful grin, and Xander blushed. 

   “No, only  _ you’ll _ be looking at your memories,” Willow said. “ _ I’m _ just looking for repetitions in the patterns. That good? Everyone game?”

   “What’s this entail?” Buffy asked. “Spell ingredients? Chants? Incantations?”

   “Oh, it’s dire,” Willow said, sitting back down at the table. “Meditation.”

   “That’s it?”

   “That’s it. I barely have to use any magic, I don’t even need a book. It’s just that thing I do when I mind-speak, only I do all of us at once. See? No danger-spells. Someone want to turn on a meditation tape?”

   Xander turned on a CD of ocean waves, everyone including Spike sat down around the table, Willow lit a candle in the center just for something for people to focus their eyes on if they couldn’t keep them closed, and they all meditated on memories of Dawn for half an hour. It was actually sort of fun. Certainly relaxing.

   Buffy had felt Willow flickering through her head now and again, and she kept bringing her mind back to memories of Dawn. Other memories did find themselves cropping up – her mom and dad, memories of Tara or Anya, moments with Angel or Riley, fights with various big bads, Giles, Spike, Xander and Willow, the whole gang, happy moments and silly ones, Thanksgiving or Christmas or Dawn’s birthday, good and bad things, but she mostly focused on the good.

   After a little while Willow said, “That’s it, I got it.” Everyone opened their eyes, Willow turned to Dawn and said, “Dawn? The first memory of you that everyone has came up just after Dracula was in town. Which means everything that happened after that? Absolutely real.”

   And Dawn had smiled. She knew exactly where the cut off was, not just some vague “six months before you found out about it.” All the memories were clear. She knew if what she remembered was real or not, and she could treasure the not-real memories as just bonus gifts of a life. It had made Dawn feel much better.

   And Buffy had been happy for her, her little sister, with all her memories exposed and clear and labeled.

   She had been glad. Until now.


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

   The last Buffy had heard, Angel was on the other side of the world. She called the number she had for him, which led to another number, which led eventually to Faith, which led to yet another number which, Faith assured her, would finally lead to Angel. Buffy hoped.

_ Ring. _

   “What is it that you need him for, love?” Spike asked again as the phone rang for yet another number. His face had been getting more and more concerned as she became more and more determined to reach Angel. She hadn’t said anything to him about what she was thinking. She felt too uncomfortable for that, yet, but she also hadn’t sent him away. She was walking a fine line between denial and inclusion. She didn’t want to lie to Spike, since it really would end up affecting him in the end, but she also wasn’t sure she was ready to tell him.

   Vampire hearing, however, was pretty acute.

_   Ring. _

   “I just need to ask him something.” The concern did not leave Spike’s face. “Just... about the past, okay? I need to double check.”

_  Ring. _

   Buffy knew that if this thought had occurred to her at any other time of her life, she wouldn’t have dared to ask. It would have been too painful, too terrifying, far too disturbing. But now she was a fully grown woman, secure in her slayerhood, her strength, her emotions, and her self-assurance. She knew who she was, and what she wanted. She had a devoted lover, friends who respected her, and a real place in the world. Gone was the traumatized teenager in denial. Gone was the confused young woman with relationship issues. Gone, she had hoped, were her sexual hang ups.

_ Ring. _

   She wanted this nipped before it got ugly.

   “Hello?”

   “Angel?” Buffy asked, and was annoyed at how small her voice sounded. “It’s Buffy.”

   “Buffy....”

   There was dead silence over the phone for a long moment.

   “Hi.”

   “Yeah, hi,” Buffy said.

   More long silence. Spike turned his head away, but not fast enough for Buffy to miss him rolling his eyes. He was respecting this, whatever this was, but that didn’t mean he liked it. Any of it.

   Buffy wondered if she should just slap down the phone. Stupid as that was. Angel always made her feel like a teenage kid. Probably because there still was that stupid love-struck teenage girl inside her, and, as Spike had told Buffy frequently, some part of her still loved Angel. She loved Spike, but she had deeply loved Angel, and love doesn’t just go away so easy, which meant all that Angel-love, it was still all mixed up in all the other things in her admittedly bizarrely mixed-up Buffy psyche.

   “Buffy, is there some problem you need me for?” Angel said. “I’m sort of... dealing with a ghost over here....”

   “Over here” was, if Buffy understood things correctly, somewhere in southern India. If there weren’t hundreds upon thousands of ghosts there, she would have been surprised. But she was dealing with a god damned ghost herself, in a way.

   “But, you know, if you need me, I could....” Angel went on.

   “No, I just needed to ask you a question,” Buffy said. “Some... questions.”

   Angel sniffed over the phone, as if steeling himself. “Okay.”

   Long pause.

   Loooong pause, in which she could feel Spike’s eyes burning into the side of her head, and could hear Angel’s trepidation dripping over the phone.

   “Did you ever burn mystical incense in my room to keep me paralyzed and unconscious?”

   Wow. That just came right out, then. She’d thought she was gonna lead up to that.

   Angel’s response was what she expected. “What? What are you talking about?”

   Spike had stepped back into Buffy’s line of sight, but she turned her face away, unwilling try and read his expression. “It’s important. Did you ever do that to me?”

   Angel sounded somewhat indignant over the phone. “I don’t know how you could think that, Buffy. I’d never do anything like that.”

   Buffy had lots of answers for that, but didn’t feel like getting into them. “I mean when you didn’t have a soul.” 

   Angel was silent over the phone.

   “Angel? I asked you a question. When I was seventeen, when you didn’t have a soul, when you were sneaking into my bedroom and leaving creepy sketches on my pillow. Did you ever do that?”

   “Buffy, I wasn’t the same person then.”

   She was standing next to another vampire, with a soul, who never once pretended he wasn’t the same person.

   “Did that happen?” she pressed. “Was that something you did?”

   “I would never do that, Buffy.” 

   Something in his voice sounded disingenuous. The little voice in her head was shouting, BIG FAT LIAR!

   “But what about that other person, then?” Buffy asked. “Would Angelus have done that?”

   They both knew the answer to that. Of course he would have. “Buffy....”

   “Did you do that? I need you to answer.”

   “Why?”

   “Angel!”

   There was a frustrated breath on the other side of the phone. Buffy could just picture his puppy-dog face as he begged her to understand. “Buffy, I... I don’t know what to say....”

   “He could try the truth for once,” Spike muttered behind Buffy’s head. He was still standing close enough to hear Angel’s responses, soft though they were through the phone against Buffy’s ear.

   “It was over a hundred years ago,” Angel said in what was almost a whine.

    “Huh?” Buffy was flummoxed. “No it wasn’t.”

   “It was for me,” Angel said. “You stabbed me through the heart and sent me to hell? I was there for a while, if you’d care to remember.”

   He sounded as if he expected her to feel sorry for him for that. At some level, she had, once. Using it as an excuse for... for  _ this _ made her skin bristle. “Excuse me?” she asked. “So because I sent you to a hell of your own choosing after you tried to destroy the world, I’m supposed to believe you, what... don’t remember torturing me?”

   “Buffy....”

   “Did you drug me, or not!”

   “Buffy, it’s been years,” he said. “I wasn’t even the same person. Whatever happened to you, whatever he did to you, that wasn’t  _ me. _ ”

   “Is this a confession, then?” Buffy asked.

   “No!”

   “Then you’re saying you didn’t do it?”

   “I’m saying it doesn’t matter!” Angel snapped. “Look, it’s over now, isn’t it? Whatever happened, it happened a long time ago. You’ve moved on, we’ve moved on, those things that he did when I had no soul, that wasn’t me. I can barely remember it, and your brain is human, I’m sure it’s all murky for you, too. And it's done. You forgave me, I’ve forgiven you–”

   “Ex _ cuse _ me? You’ve forgiven  _ me? _ ”

   “I’m just saying, nothing that happened  _ then _ can have any bearing on what’s happening  _ now,  _ right?”

   “You still haven’t answered my question.”

   “I think I have,” Angel said. “Look, I have to go, I just....”

   He was going to hang up. He was going to avoid the topic, evade the question, and hang the fuck up.

   “Angel, did you rape me?”

   Wow. She’d just come out and said that, too. She was suddenly all blunt girl today.

   There was another of those long, awkward pauses. “I... I would never do that, Buffy,” Angel said again. “I wouldn’t. I left so that I.... No. I-I wouldn’t....”

   But Angelus would.

   Silence. He had turned off the phone.

   Buffy knew calling back would receive no answer. She stared at the phone in her hand for a moment, then tossed it lightly onto the table in disgust. Fat lot of good that phone call did.

   “Buffy.” Spike took her hand and sat her down beside the table, staring earnestly into her face. “What was all that about?”

   “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Probably nothing,” Buffy said. She wondered if she should have done this without Spike in the room. But if Angel’s answer had been yes, she would have needed Spike there. And the answer she’d gotten... wasn’t a no.

   “Buffy, what made you ask Angel that question?”

   Looking a little shamefaced, Buffy told him the contents of her dream.

   Spike listened, trying not to judge. He had always known Buffy had a great big Angel spot in her psyche, and her sexuality. He was her first, he’d mucked her up royally, and it didn’t surprise or offend him that she might occasionally have sex dreams about the sod. What he didn’t understand was, why this one had bugged her so.

   “Because it wasn’t the first one,” Buffy said.

   “Yeah, I figured.”

   “No....” Buffy leaned back in her chair and hugged herself. “Thing is, I... I used to dream about... that... a lot. When I was a teenager.”

   “I’m not surprised.”

   “No, but that detail...? The incense? The scent of it? I remember it. Or... or I think I remember it.” She stood up and started pacing. “And it’s really weird, because I didn’t remember. It’s not like I forgot, but it’s like I didn’t think about it. And I was still so new to the slayer gig, and I’d have dreams that felt so strong and so real, and I’d had dreams about... I mean... I even used to have sex dreams about  _ you _ , and they were all some kind of teen-hormone induced translation of fighting and danger and stuff—”

   “Suure they were,” Spike said with a smirk.

   “And I don’t want to say these ones were different, because they weren’t. But... there were... hints....”

   “Hints?”

   “That the dreams I had... might not have been.”

   Spike regarded her. “Hints like what?”

   “Like sometimes I would have a tampon that came out in the night. And I mean, that’s not impossible, and I used to think that was just normal, it’s just... it... hasn’t happened since.”

   Spike remained silent.

   “And when I was with Parker? I’ve been told even the second time it can still hurt cause you’re not, you know... physically used to it and stuff. And... it didn’t hurt.”

   “Well, you’re a slayer. Probably not definitive, that.”

   “No, it’s not,” Buffy said. “None of it’s definitive. It’s just... mom would try to get me out of bed back then, and sometimes I couldn’t at first. I thought it was just depression. I mean, my heart was broke, I was miserable. And then sometimes I’d think I went to bed with my underwear on under my nightshirt, and in the morning....”

   “Not there?”

   “Yeah.” She sighed. “But maybe I hadn’t actually left them on, I don’t always. I don’t know.” Buffy sat back down. “And the thing is, Angel’s trying to tell me he doesn’t remember, and I don’t buy that. If it hadn’t happened, he’d just say he never did it, right? But if it had happened, you’d think he wouldn’t be so weird about it. And you’d think he’d have said something back when we were still dating. This is such bullshit, how can he pretend he doesn’t remember?”

   “Maybe he doesn’t,” Spike said quietly.

   Buffy glared at him. “You’re defending him?”

   “No. Just I know Angel. He might actually be hazy on it, with the soul and all.”

   Buffy’s glare sharpened. “You never once pretend you don’t remember all the evil you did without a soul.”

   “Yeah, but I’m not Angel,” Spike said. “You don’t get it, he really has split himself up inside. Faith could tell you, if you asked her. He’s got troubles sometimes remembering the dark stuff he did as Angelus. I mean, if he tells you flat out he’s got no memory of any of it, that’s bollocks, but if he’s not sure....” Spike shrugged. “He doesn’t want to be the same bloke, so in some ways he’s not. It’s how he copes. I know I’d be traumatized by the idea I’d done sommat like that to you. I’d want to block it out, too.”

   “You’d never try and tell me you don’t remember drugging and raping me.”

   “Didn’t remember me mum,” Spike said. “For a long time.”

   Buffy went still and then reached out for Spike’s hand. Their hands fit neatly together, familiar flesh, the perfect shape. She caressed the back of his hand with her thumb. “That’s not the same.”

   “Isn’t it?” Spike asked. “Something horrid I did to someone I loved. Something that I look back on, and twists me up right proper. Who’s to say Angel doesn’t have the same trouble?”

   “That’s no excuse.”

   “Didn’t say it was.”

   “Also,” Buffy snapped, “that has nothing to do with the damn  _ soul _ . When you finally did remember that, it was  _ after _ you got the soul, yeah? So the soul actually helped you remember something you did when you were evil, it didn’t conveniently block the evil out of your mind so you don’t have to face the consequences of it.”

   “Yeah, but Angel and me aren’t the same, Buffy.”

   Buffy sighed and let go his hand again, but only so she could get back to pacing. “I just wanted to know whether it happened or not! I wanted to know if I’m traumatized, or just sick!”

   “Sick?”

   Buffy sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Angel’s right, it’s all over now.”

   “No, it’s not over, what do you mean sick?”

   “It doesn’t matter.”

   Spike took hold of Buffy’s hand and pulled her over into his lap. She let him. “Buffy, love.” He gently kissed her jawline by her ear. “What do you mean sick?”

   Buffy looked down. She sighed. “If it happened... if it was real... then I didn’t let myself see it for weeks, months, even. I didn’t disinvite Angel even when I knew he was evil. I think... no, I  _ know  _ part of me was hoping he’d turn good again, and come back to me. But maybe... maybe some part of me didn’t care. Maybe I wanted him back even though he was evil. And that meant... I still wanted him in my bed, even though he was evil. And that would mean I sort of let him.”

   “Let him...?”

   “Yeah, let him!” Buffy snapped, clearly uncomfortable.

   “Buffy, if you were drugged, if you can barely remember it as something that may or may not have happened, you sure as hell didn’t  _ let _ him.”

   “I know! That’s the point!” Buffy snapped. “I didn’t let him, but I let him! I didn’t want him, but I wanted him. I knew what he could do to me, I knew he was evil, I knew there were spells and drugs and-and Drusilla and things that could make it so I couldn’t fight back, and I still went home and left the door wide open waiting for him to come and... do things to me.” She looked down. “And it wasn’t until he threatened mom that I even thought about closing the door.”

   Spike was looking at her with an odd expression on his face. She slid off his lap and started pacing again. “What does that say about me?” she said. “I mean, that’s disgusting, it’s weird, it’s bizarre, it’s...”

   “Something I knew about you from before I even fell for you, love.”

   Buffy stared at him. “Huh?”

   “Buffy, we were two steps away from making love under that marriage spell of Willow’s,” Spike said. “And you were saying no while acting yes that whole night. And when we first started for real, you and me, you were at it constantly. Kinda buggered me up, actually.”

   Buffy looked down.

   “It’s a thing you’ve got, like your thing for vampires.” He smirked. “It’s not a big deal.”

   “Not a big deal that I want to be raped?”

   “I didn’t  _ say _ that, I just....” He rubbed at his face. “Look. No one wants to be raped. By the definition of it, yeah? But sometimes... sometimes you like to kinda... be pushed into it.”

   “How is that not...?”

   “Well, does it feel like it?”

   “I don’t... how can I...? Spike, that’s what I’m trying to figure out! I’m trying to figure out if Angel did that to me, and if he did why I... let it happen.”

   “It’s more complicated than that,” Spike said. “You didn’t let it—”

   “But I did! I let it happen, and I let it happen with you, and it’s like a betrayal of women everywhere that I might have wanted to be hurt and abused and raped!”

   Spike looked uncomfortable. “I never said you wanted to be raped,” he said quietly. “Your face is etched in my soul. Believe me. I’d never say that.”

   He turned and strode into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind him.

   Buffy felt sick. She’d realized this was a fucked up thing about her, but she’d almost forgotten this was a fucked up thing about Spike, too. Which, given the circumstances, she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten. She came up to the door and lightly scratched on it before opening it, giving Spike a chance to tell her to sod off if he really needed to be alone.

   He didn’t. She came in to find him standing by the bed, sort of hugging himself. Snuggles were clearly what was needed now. She walked past him, taking him by the wrist as she did so, and insinuated herself across the bed, pulling the unreluctant Spike in with her. They wrapped arms around each other and snuggled down onto the pillows, a position so familiar they both sort of sighed as soon as they got there, as if settling back into place.

   “Sorry,” Buffy whispered as soon as they’d settled in together. “I forgot you’d be messed up about this, too.”

   “About Angel, or about the whole idea?”

   “The whole thing,” Buffy whispered.

   Spike almost chuckled. “Nice you could forget.”

   “I don’t forget, I just... put you and me on a different... scheme than everything else, you know? What we have is what we have, and everything else is everything else. I forgot that was kind of the turning point for you.” She sighed. “I’m fucked up. I’m just afraid Angel was what might have made me fucked up.”

   “We knew it was,” Spike said. “But we knew that before this.”

   Buffy shrugged, not denying it.

   Spike touched her cheek gently. “Do you really think it happened?”

   Buffy was silent for a long time, and then confessed the real reason for her suspicion. “Now that the thought’s occurred to me, I’m having a really hard time thinking of a reason why it wouldn’t.”

   Spike couldn’t help but admit she had him there. As far as honesty went, there was only one lifeline. “I can think of one.”

   Buffy looked up.

   “Angel usually saved the  _ rape them to death _ for the end game.”

   She considered this. “Usually?”

   Spike looked sad. “Not always.” 

   “I was afraid of that.” She snuggled in a little closer to him and breathed in his familiar scent. Spike was hers. Her own snuggly soulful vampire man. It felt good to be in his arms. “Do you know... would she have told you, if he’d done that to Drusilla? Before he turned her, I mean.”

   “I know he did.”

   Buffy swallowed. “Every night, or just at the end...?”

  “Reports varied. Angelus would say whatever he thought sounded more evil, if you asked him, and he’d change his mind about what that meant sometimes. Dru... well. You know her.”

   “Yeah.” Dru could say one thing and dream another and hallucinate something else entirely. “That was part of the dream,” she whispered. “He said he’d come to Drusilla and hold her down at night. But I was a slayer, so he needed the incense. ‘Cause if I could fight him off, I could win.”

   Spike didn’t answer.

   “Is there such an incense? A spell sort of paralyzing stuff...?”

   He looked away. “Wish I could tell you no.”

   “Was it for sale in Sunnydale?”

   There was a long and rather uncomfortable pause. 

   “Spike?” 

   He rolled his eyes. “Buffy, god…. Do you really want to know this?”

   She touched his cheek in turn. “I am asking.”

   “You know it was. You saw it.”

   “Huh?” 

   His uncomfortable got a bit stronger. “I had a stash of it.”

   Oh. Buffy was terribly afraid this was going to be one of the Spike horror-stories which sometimes he had to confess to her. “Was it… something you used on victims?”

   “Didn’t need it for that, it was for Dru.”

   “Dru? She liked to be drugged and…?”

   “Nothing like that, it was was part of what kept her and Angel still for that regeneration spell I did. When I needed the blood of her sire. Like I said, you saw it. I used it on both of ‘em and then waved it around for that dumb ceremony before you came in with the mimeograph slayer and took me on in a tag team.”

   Oh, right. She did remember that smell there, now, and the incense censer. Spike was never one to stand on ceremony much, so there had to have been a reason for the stuff. Buffy sighed again. She had wondered why Angel wasn’t fighting very hard when she’d walked in on that spell. None of this sounded good.

   Buffy swallowed and closed her eyes. “Do you know if Angel took some of it?”

   “Buffy....”

   “You were living together.”

   “While I was in a wheelchair, if you remember, and I was a bit too preoccupied to check the spell supply cabinet when the factory burnt.”

   Buffy stared into his eyes. “Spike? Do you think it happened?”

   Spike was silent for a long time. Finally he closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’d rather believe not, but....”

   “Do you know something you haven’t told me?”

   Spike’s eyes opened again. “He didn’t brag about it to me straight, if you mean that,” he said. “But he wouldn’t, ‘cause if I’d known he was using a drug-spell, I’d have called him out as a coward, and he didn’t want to give me a leg to stand on, even when I didn’t have any working legs. I was the slayer-killer; he was trying to one-up me. And I already thought he was weak for not just ripping your lungs out.”

   Buffy raised an eyebrow.

   “I was evil then,” Spike said with a smirk.

   She chuckled, glad she could find stuff to laugh at even in the middle of this.

   “But he did say... force wouldn’t get it done. He had a plan to destroy you, which....” He stopped.

   “What?”

   Spike sighed. “He told me, ‘To kill this girl, you have to love her.’”

   Buffy thought about this. “ _ God _ , he was an asshole!”

   Spike laughed aloud.

   “So you do think it happened?” Buffy asked in the lighter mood that followed.

   “I really don’t know. It could’ve. Hate the thought.” Spike squeezed her. “So what do we do now?”

   “I don’t know. I mean, I guess we could track Angel down and you could torture him into answering.”

   “I hope you’re kidding.”

   “Mostly.”

   “Buffy....”

   “If he won’t answer, I don’t know, we’re nowhere.”

   “Well... okay. Then let’s assume it’s true.”

   “What?”

   “Assume it’s true. Even if it isn’t, it’s sure as hell something he  _ would _ ’ve done.”

   Buffy grunted, annoyed, but Spike was right.

   “So, say it happened. What’s that mean?”

   “It means I was raped, and I was sick and naive enough to let it happen.”

   “Okay, but what does  _ that _ mean? Does that change anything about who you are?”

   “Are you trying to tell me Angel had a point when he said it ‘doesn’t matter’?”

   “Not unless that’s true for you. He’s not the one who gets to decide that, you are.”

   Buffy was silent for a long moment. Then, in a very tiny voice she confessed.... “It was hot.”

   “The dream?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Yeah,” Spike said. He’d absolutely noticed.

   “What if he’s the one who twisted that in me?” Buffy asked. “What if he made me sick in some mental way that I can’t get over?”

   “Well... I think calling it sick’s a bit harsh.”

   “I don’t. It’s not just that.” Buffy twisted a bit and snuggled up tight against him, so he couldn’t see her face. He did this sometimes, when he told her horror stories that his demonic past enjoyed but his soul couldn’t face. She felt almost the same, now. “I used to imagine it, too. Not just dreams, but... imagine him coming to me. Him coming back to me, and just doing... doing that. And after he did come back to me, I....”

   “You imagined it more?”

   “I imagined it worse,” she said. “He wouldn’t, you know, ‘cause... ‘cause we couldn’t, and I imagined... I imagined just going to him and... and doing it. Taking what I wanted from him, while the whole time he’d be saying,  _ We can’t, we can’t. _ ” She swallowed. “I’m really fucked up.”

   Spike nuzzled her face, his nose soft against his skin. “Tell me what you’d have done to him.”

   Buffy looked up. “What?”

   “Tell me,” he said softly. “Tell me what you’d do to him. Tell me how you’d take what you wanted, whether he wanted it or not.”

   “Spike that’s—”

   “Sick? It’s you,” he said. “It’s your head, it’s your mind, it’s Buffy.” He kissed her forehead. “And I’m in love with Buffy,” he whispered. “Even the dark bits.”

   “Spike, it’s evil, it’s—”

   “It’s a fantasy,” he said. “I know the difference between thinking something and doing it. You sure as hell should.”

   Buffy breathed in his scent. Vampire scent, like Angel, only with cigarettes and a different hair gel and something very  _ Spike _ that was not at all the same. “Do you think about stuff like that?”

   “I’ve thought worse. You know I’ve done worse, without a soul to feel through it. Angel may have taken something from you, okay, that’s done. Take it back. It was hot, you liked the feeling of the thought of it, at least, take that back. You be you. You take the good bits and the weird bits and the grey bits and all the bits of your body and your mind and your soul and your sex that’s yours, and don’t you give them up because  _ he _ was evil.” He kissed her tenderly then, and she gasped. “What would you have done to him, Buffy? You be evil for a change.”

***

   “I’m done.”

   Angel looks up from his book, confused. The mansion on Crawford street is lit by firelight, the room full of Angel’s pretentious art, and the hard, concrete, faux-stone walls. “Buffy? I... I thought we’d agreed you wouldn’t come over here anymore. That it’s over.”

   “You agreed to that,” Buffy says. “I didn’t.” And without further preamble, she takes off her coat.

   Angel stands up, the book forgotten, shock on his face. “What the hell? Buffy, what are you wearing?”

   “Not a lot, now,” she says with a grin. “You thought you’d date a teenage girl and just do what you wanted with her? That you could snap and say come, and point and say go, and I’d do what you wanted like a cute spotted pup?”

   “Buffy... that’s uncalled for.”

   “Maybe it is,” she says. She comes up to him and runs her hands over his chest. “Mm... you really are quite built. This chest... sweet. Why do you wear these shirts all the time?” She slides her hands down his buttons, deftly undoing them one by one.

   “Buffy....” Angel takes her hands and tries to put her away, like he always did before. “Stop. We can’t do this.”

   “Do what? I’m just standing naked in your living room. What terrible thing do you think I’m after?” She finishes with his shirt and yanks it off his shoulders, roughly. “You?”

   “Hey!” He takes her shoulders and holds her away. “I mean it now. Stop.”

   Buffy slows down and leans forward just a little. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry, I just... I love you so much, and I want you so badly... please...? Just... just one kiss?”

   His face softens and he bends for her, and the kiss is not chaste. Not at all. Buffy wraps her arms around him and pulls him close, holding him tightly, jamming her tongue into his mouth, and he grunts and tries to pull away after a moment. “No. No, we can’t. We can’t....”

   “We can.” Buffy kisses him more, and for a brief moment he lets her. Then,

   “No.” He pushes her gently away. “No, no, Buffy. Stop.”

   “No,” Buffy says. She pushes back into his embrace. “I don’t want to stop.”

   “Buffy....”

   “No.” She clings to him, burying her face in his chest. “I can’t stop, Angel, it’s too much to ask. I want this, dammit. I want you.”

   “We can’t.” She’s kissing his chest, and it’s making his breath come hard. “Buffy, enough,” he says, gasping. “I can’t.  _ We _ can’t, I have to....”

   “What?” Buffy reaches down and grabs the front of his pants. His hardness is unmistakable. “You know you want to.”

   “That’s not the point, Buffy. We both know what happens if we... if I....”

   “Fuck me?” she asks. “I get off. I finally get the fuck off, don’t I deserve that?”

   “Of course you do, that’s why I.... It just... it can’t be me....”

   “Oh, but you want it to be, don’t you,” she whispers, pushing him backwards. “You want to take me and splay me out on a bed and take my virginity from me, don’t you?”

   “Yes!” he admits. “Yes, I wanted to make love to you, but we can’t! And you know why we can’t.”

   “Because you’ll lose your soul?” Buffy almost laughs. “Who the fuck cares anymore? What’s the difference?”

   Angel stares at her, all in earnest. “People’s lives.”

   “Then we just won’t let you kill. How’s that sound?”

   “Buffy—”

   She pushes him back against the wall, writhing her body atop him. “No,” he groans. He continues to protest as she rubs against him, causing friction through his clothes. He can’t escape, though he tries, many times, tries to push away from the wall, tries to put her away like an erring child, like he’s done so many fucking times, and she always had to be good, and she always had to say okay, and she always had to sigh and swallow her hunger and all but mutter yes sir as she followed behind like a little girl denied her lollipops, but she wasn’t a fucking little girl anymore, and she didn’t have to listen to him.

   He tries to push her off seriously now. “Enough!”

   And Buffy slams him back against the wall hard, and forces her kisses back onto him. He turns his head away. “Buffy, stop this! This isn’t like you!”

   “You don’t know what I’m like. You never fucking knew me!”  He knew what he wanted her to be, what he tried to make her into, the good little slayer who did what she was told and only spread her legs when it was convenient for him. Well, she wasn’t a good slayer. She was just a slayer, and she wanted what she wanted, and she wanted his hard body against hers and inside hers and she wanted to hear him moan, dammit!

   He makes a desperate push and finally shoves her off. “No!” he shouts. “We can’t! I want to, Buffy, I do, I want to so badly, but I can’t! I can’t let myself lose my soul in you, I can’t give you that.”

   “You’re not giving anything,” she snarls. “I’m taking it!” A roundhouse kick knocks his legs from under him and he falls hard onto his back, knocking his head slightly against the wall, the breath knocked from him. She jumps him then, holding his hands back, straddling him as she always wanted to.

   “No,” he groans. “Don’t!”

   She flexes over the bulge in his groin, and he strains his arms against hers, but she’s much stronger than him. “Not how you wanted it to be, huh?” She stares down. “You expected something else, right? Something sweet? Something innocent? Some half-terrified virgin convinced that everything she’s doing is wrong? A swooning maiden in some old story? You wanted an innocent?” She glares down at him. “I’m not innocent anymore. You saw to that.”

   “No... no, Buffy, this wasn’t what I wanted for you...!”

   “Fuck what you want!” She chuckles. “And I’m gonna fuck what I want. And I want you.”

   “That’s where we are?” He stares up at her, all his desperate pleading faded from his eyes. “No. No!” The tormented look is banished completely as he vamps up, and his strength redoubles as he tries to throw her off. “If I have to bite you to get you off...”

   “Oh, you’re gonna get me off.” She glares down at him. “Try and bite me all you like.” She pulls a stake from her dropped coat beside them, and jams it sideways into his mouth. He tries to shove it out with his tongue, but, silly Angel, he’s all vamped up. His teeth have imbedded in the wood, and he can’t open his jaws enough to remove them. Not without using his hands. And she has no intention of letting him use his hands.

   He can’t cry out anymore. All he can do is struggle. Buffy has to get his clothes off somehow, though, so she lets go one hand to claw at his pants. He reaches up, swinging at her, but her head dodges the blow, and she flips him, catching one hand under his body and holding him down with her knee. She can hold him down one handed that way, and he still can’t get that stake out of his mouth, though she can hear his muffled curses as he tries and fails to talk, or tries to get that damn stake out, or both.

   Now she can yank his pants down. They’re old, thin, an old man’s pants on a young man’s frame. So easily ripped. He groans as the cloth pulls on his tender, swollen areas, but that’s okay. She has nether lips she can kiss that better with.

   She flips him back over once she’s cleared his clothes, and he’s still hard enough to play with. He flails, but she grabs both hands and forces them down to either side, dancing over his cock until it gets hard enough again to slip inside.

   “Ohhhh!”

   Was he saying no? She flexes over him, not caring, because she has him, has what she wanted of him, and it was  _ glorious _ . “Oh, god, Angel, yes... yes.... Thank god...!”

   Now that she’s reached her goal, Angel’s muscles relax a little. She knows it feels good. She knew he wanted it. “Yeah, there you go,” she whispers as his yellow eyes fade with the pleasure. “There, it’s not you. You didn’t choose this, I did. You don’t even have to think about it.” She lets go one arm and helps him loose the stake from his mouth, now that his fangs aren’t holding it in place. “There, there, shh. It’s all right. We’re meant for this.”

   “Buffy....” His loose hand grabs at her waist and his hips flex under her. At first it just seems he’s enjoying it, but then he makes one more move to throw her off. She slams herself back over his cock and grabs his muscular arm again.

   “No, no, this is it,” she says. “This is it, this is how it happens. It’s okay.” She rides him steadily. “It’s okay, this is how it’s supposed to be. You’re not weak. I’m just stronger, that’s all. I took... I took what I wanted ‘cause I’m strong enough to.” She gasps as she grinds herself over him, feeling the sweet pleasure on her clit, his thick fullness deep inside. “What was it Faith said? Want? Take? Have.” She leans forward and whispers into his mouth. “I have you now.”

   “You’ll lose me,” Angel whispers up. “You do this... and you’ve lost me.”

   “I know. But I’ve lost you anyway.”

   “Buffy....”

   “How dare you leave when you’ve already taken everything? My innocence and my purity and my goodness, I gave it all to you, and you ran away with it, you fucking thief!”

   “I’m sorry....”

   “If you were sorry,” she whispers, “you’d have stopped before you took everything.” She speeds up, thrusting hard, jerking over him until she makes herself come. Thank god, thank god, oh, thank god, she’s needed this so badly! She stiffens, moaning, her hands squeezing bruises onto his wrists. Then she collapses a little, gasping, released.

   “Okay,” Angel grunts, struggling under her. “You had your fun. Go now. Just go, just....”

   “No.” Buffy begins thrusting again, rocking back and forth, forcing her slickness over his cock, squeezing him hard.

   “No!” he yells. “No, if we stop now it might—”

   “Shut up,” Buffy snaps, thrusting hard. “I want you, I want every fucking part of you.”

   “No... no!” His eyes close and he strains under her, almost sobbing. Tears stream from his warm brown eyes. “Buffy... Buffy, stop... stop, please...! I can’t hold back! I can’t! I going to... ugh!”

   “Don’t hold back,” she whispers into his mouth. “Don’t hold back, let it go. Let it go. You know you want to be inside me. You want to release yourself in me, now’s your chance. You didn’t do this, I did. I made you do it. For once I really did  _ make you _ .” She touches his lips with hers, never stopping moving. “Let it go.”

   She kisses him properly then, and after a second he yells into her mouth, his cock stiffening further, his body straining. Buffy cries out with him, both of them screaming out their epic failure.

   “I’m sorry, Buffy,” Angel whispers up at her, sobbing openly. “What have I done to you...? I’m sorry... I’m sorry....”

   “So am I,” Buffy whispers back. “Because you know what happens now.”

   Angel looks up, bewilderment in his eyes. His soul is still there. Is he perfectly happy amidst all those tears? Is he about to lose it? Does it even matter?

   Not anymore.

   Buffy grabs the stake on the floor beside them, and does what has to be done.

 

***

  
  


   Spike looked up at Buffy, gasping. “Damn,” he breathed. “Working out a few aggressions, are we?”

   Buffy looked down at him, suddenly self-conscious. “You okay?”

   “Well, you only faked that last bit, so....” He looked down at the stake embedded in the mattress by his armpit. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He giggled a little hysterically.

   “I shouldn’t have....”

   “Buffy, it’s okay. You’ve wrestled me lots harder than that.”

   “This was different, though.”

   It was. They’d done bondage and wrestling and even role play, but never actively pushing away, calling out no, arguing about the act itself. Who dominated who, yes. Never something quite like this.

   Also, there was one other thing.

   “You were never willing to play Angel before.”

   Spike flexed his arm, and Buffy finally let it go. He caressed her face, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “I was never willing to play some idealized version of the sod that never existed, while you kept screaming out how much you hated me, no. Bit different, this.”

   “Yeah... yeah, it was. Just maybe I shouldn’t’ve....”

   “I asked,” Spike whispered up at her.

   He had. He’d told her to, to indulge in her fantasy and then go ahead and live it out. “Why?”

   He shrugged. “You needed it.”

   Buffy looked down at him. “You used to do this for Dru, didn’t you.”

   Spike had told her as much, but she’d never really connected with what that meant. Acting the victim as Drusilla worked out her revenge on him for what Angelus had done to her. Though, Spike had done much the same for Buffy before, really. She hadn’t been pretending he was Angel when she had abused him after she’d come back from death, but she had certainly been projecting all her hatred toward everyone and everything and especially herself onto him while she beat and fucked the life out of him. And then after his own mistake, he’d goaded her into hitting him even while fighting his madness, letting her work out that anger toward him.

   “Sometimes.” Spike shrugged. “Sometimes I’d have to play the other side.” Buffy raised an eyebrow and he clarified, “I’d have to hurt her like he did sometimes. Or she didn’t feel right.” He caressed Buffy’s arm, his eyes vacant. “She might well have actually been seeing me as Angel then, not just pretending. She did that sometimes.”

   “Did that bother you?”

   He looked up at her, his blue eyes shadowed with dark history. “You know I like to be wanted, Buffy. I’d do anything for that.”

   “But if she was really seeing you as Angel....”

   Then he wouldn’t have been. But he’d also do whatever it took for her. Buffy lay down over him and hugged him tight, so filled with love it made her chest hurt. Spike squeezed her back and then rolled her over. She squawked as the back of the stake bruised her shoulder blade. “Bugger.” Spike pulled the stake out and tossed it aside. “We’ve ripped another set of sheets,” he said, examining the damage.

   “Darn.”

   “I hate darning sheets.”

   Buffy laughed, and Spike smiled down at her. “There’s my girl,” he said. “Knew I could get a grin.”

   He had not, of course, matched her fantasy exactly – he was nowhere near tears – but it had been close enough for Buffy to feel as if something had changed. In her, in him, she wasn’t sure what.  

   And she feared it might not be for the better.


	3. Chapter 3

 

   “Did it change you?”

   Spike looked up. It was near dawn, and they’d had a frustrating evening patrolling and had found absolutely nothing to slay. They hadn’t spoken much about the slight change in their reality, but Buffy had felt it. Spike was careful around her. Buffy was careful around him. They’d been speaking carefully, and sharing household chores carefully, and they made love carefully. They hadn’t had a single lovers spat since. That wasn’t really like them.

   She couldn’t shake the idea that something had shifted between them, for good or for ill. She had no fears of it crumbling beneath them — they were both too invested in each other for that — but she wanted to know what the shifting sand would ultimately mean.

   “Did what change me?”

   “When Angel — Angelus. When he first attacked you? I mean, I know you told me he started with the buddy-buddy seduction, but you admitted he’d... I mean to you... eventually....”

   “Do you mean when he first attacked me, or when he first raped me?” Spike asked lightly. “Because those aren’t exactly the same thing.”

   Darn Spike knew his lady. He’d known it was still bugging her. “Both, really,” she confessed.

   He shrugged and got into bed. “The first rape weren’t much different from the first time he beat me, really. Came in the same torture session, had much the same effect. Just one more torture.” He held his arm out for Buffy to crawl under, and she slipped in beside him. “After that things got strange sometimes, but that was the point.”

   “To change you?”

   “Yeah.” He squeezed her and seemed about to try and go to sleep. Since he usually came to bed after Buffy, and he’d been careful for the last few mornings to get to bed with her, and hold her as she fell asleep, she knew he was trying to be there for her now that... whatever it was... had changed.

   “How?”

   Spike looked down. “Do you really want to know this?”

   “I... I don’t know. I mean I do, but....” She grunted and glared at the ceiling. “I wish I’d never put this together, and we could just go back to-to....”

   “Living in denial about what he did to you?”

   Buffy hadn’t realized that’s what she had been doing, but no, he was right. That was exactly what she’d been doing. Even if — a big if — her twisted nightmare/memory of incense-assisted rape was false, she’d been living in denial about the mental games and the murder and all the other horrors she endured at the hands of Angelus for years. She’d shunted it all onto the concept of  _ he didn’t have a soul! _ and pretended that made all the difference. But she’d been living with Spike for too long, both with and without a soul, to know that while a soul did make a difference... it didn’t make  _ all _ the difference.

   She sighed, and he squeezed her. “It’s all right, Buffy. Sometimes denial’s there for a reason. A scab you need to heal under.”

   He knew all about that. As he’d pointed out the other day, he’d blocked out the death of his mother.

   “You never told me much about what Angel did to you.”

   “Figured his crimes were his.”

   “They are,” Buffy said. “Except when they’re also yours.”

   “Well, yeah, but I don’t go bragging of my kills to you either.”

   “You confess them sometimes.”

   Spike nuzzled the top of her head. “When they burn my soul and I need to, yeah,” he said. “But those are my crimes, not Angel’s.”

   “I’m not asking about his crimes,” Buffy said. “I was asking about you... not as a killer, but as a-a....”

   “Victim?”

   Buffy hadn’t wanted to say the word.

   “I don’t know, love, what with all the death and killing, the stuff my sires did was all just part and parcel. I learned pretty quick that if a vampire loves to torture, they’ll torture what they love. Love and pain twist together for us. You know that.”

   “But is it love, if it’s that? Even without a soul?”

   Spike shrugged. “Angel says no, Dru says yes, Darla would just tell me to shut it. I reckoned it was love at the time.”

   “And now?”

   Spike hesitated. “I still think love,” he said. “The soul does make love different. More human. But it was always love.”

   “Even the pain and the torture?”

   “Well, that was just his way.”

   “And did that change you? When he went from big brother to sexual torturer, what did that mean for you?”

   Spike looked up. “About him, or about me?”

   “About you. You’ve never really told me what it meant to you.” She caressed his chest. “Is it hard to say? If it’s traumatic or something, I’ll shut up.”

   “It’s not traumatic, Buffy, I’ve got too much horror in my head to ever call that shit traumatic. It’s just the stuff with Angel... you loved him, pet. I could tell you the details, but I figured they’d put you in a bad head space.”

   Buffy nestled close to him and listened for a moment for the heartbeat she knew wasn’t there. She didn’t know why it made her smile sometimes to find it missing. Stupid vamp kink. If she hadn’t had it before, she sure as hell had it now, with Spike as her lover for so long. Damn Angel for throwing a... what is it Spike would have said? A spanner in the works? “Already there,” she confessed.

   Spike hesitated, and finally said, “I can tell you when it changed. That edge where it went from mere betrayal to confusion. But you might not understand it.”

   “Try me.”

   “Buffy... even I still don’t understand it,” Spike said. “But I guess I can tell you anyway.”

 

***

 

   He’d lost track of the days. The curtains drawn, not even the fire lit. The first part hadn’t even been here in the dark. It had started after Angelus had stopped the  _ We’re all friends here _ bollocks. He’d betrayed William, with Drusilla, with his beating after. The beating and the draining and the further beating and whatever else it was that he had done. William wasn’t even sure about all of it. Some of it... hadn’t made any sense.

   Eventually they’d cut him down, Drusilla and Angelus, and they’d dragged him here. (She’d watched the whole time. As Angelus beat him and stripped him and burned him and tortured him, and she’d giggled at his screams and laughed at his begging and danced to the music of his moans.)  Dru had tucked him tenderly into bed, and then lay down beside him, only to let Angelus ravish her again, half over William’s bruised and battered body, while he was too weak to even protest. Because why have it really be over even when it was supposedly over?

   William had thought he was through with the crying, but no. Seeing it one more time just brought the tears again.

   After that they’d left him alone. Healing.

   For how long? It had felt like weeks. William knew he was inhumanly strong now, strong and powerful, but what did that mean when your bones have been broken and your flesh beaten and your body twisted? What did that mean when your blood has been drained? The blood was everything, and William had lost it, Angelus had taken it, left him weak and without all his newly acquired power.

   He’d given it back, eventually, the blood, letting him nurse desperately from Drusilla — or was it Angelus himself? — still hanging from the ceiling like a side of beef. Then they’d cut him down and left him beside a half-spent victim, letting him finish her off. That was probably a gift from Dru, because it had been a child, a pitifully small amount of blood. It wasn’t enough after the beating he’d endured. The blood had finally made him feel like he might heal, but he still wasn’t strong enough to stand, even after... however long it had been.

   But the isolation now… it was almost worse than the torture. When he felt strong enough he’d call out for Dru, almost scream for her, begging her through the walls not to leave him all alone. He needed her back. But there was never any response from Drusilla. Sometimes Angelus would pound on the walls, telling him to shut his gob. He’d keep calling out until his strength failed him, almost hoping that even Angelus would come to him. Hell, even a victim would be preferable to the loneliness. He’d have to work hard to hold back, like Dru kept telling him to try, but if he could keep from killing it immediately, then at least he’d have someone to talk to.

   He’d hoped when the door opened on the firelit parlor that the intruder was Drusilla. “Dru?”

   The evil laugh that entered was not Dru’s wicked sweetness. Buttered caramel, that was Angelus when he purred his evil. Enough to clog the throat. “Not yet, Willy.”

   William choked back a sob. “Where’s Dru?” he whispered. “Want Dru.”

   “She’s not your servant, Willy. She’s my wicked daughter.”

   “She’s not... not yours....”  _ Shut it!  _ he told himself, since he knew that was likely to anger Angelus. Unfortunately, he wasn’t listening. “Dru’s mine... we’re meant....”

   The fire brightened in the grate, and William cringed. Was Angelus starting with the burning hot pokers again? He tensed, steeling himself. He could endure this, he could. He was strong now. 

    But he couldn’t hold back the panic as Angelus came to the side of the bed. “No!” Hands over his bruised flesh made him start, crying out, his voice slurred with panic. “No, no, not again! I was wrong, I’m sorry, I...”

   “Shh, shh, now, little Willy,” Angelus hissed gently. “Not here for that.” He caressed him gently, dragging down the covers Drusilla had draped over his battered corpse. “Now, isn’t that a pretty picture?” he said, his eyes traveling down William’s bruises. “I will say, I’ve outdone myself. I must thank Dru. Gave me a lovely rich English canvas to paint on.”

   Is that what this was? Some Irish revenge on the English gentleman? No. This was more basic than that, this was just Angelus as a vampire doing what a vampire did, wasn’t it?

   Then why hadn’t William had any desire to torture  _ him? _

   He hadn’t. He’d wanted to impress him. To play with him, to kill beside him, to be his student, to follow him. He’d wanted to be like him. That was all he’d wanted.

   Angelus slid his finger up one of William’s bruises, hard. William groaned with the pain, and Angelus chuckled. “Still hurts?” 

   “Yes,” William muttered. “Satisfied?” 

   “Not yet, Willy.” He lay down on the bed and whispered in William’s ear. “Dru’s been asking for you.”

   Hope sparked in William’s chest. “She has?”

   “She’s been asking for her daisy. She said she planted a little daisy who’d go looking for the sun. Is that you, Willy?”

   “Lemme see her,” William begged. “Please.”

   “Not yet, I don’t think. Not. Yet.” Angelus’s hand slid down those bruises again, more lightly this time, and William shuddered with it. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation. Painful, but not agonizing like the beating had been, and it made him very very aware of the feel of the hand on his body. He felt pitifully naked and exposed without his clothing. Victorian men did not often reveal their bodies, even in privacy.

   And suddenly Angelus’s hand was not caressing the handiwork of his bruises. He was, to William’s utter shock, fondling his prick and tickling at his balls.

   “What in God’s name—?”

   Angelus squeezed, and William screamed. 

   “No,” Angelus said. “Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, Willy. He’s not yours any longer.”

   William knew that, it was built into his being, to reject God and all of His Works, but it seemed very joyless of Angelus, and besides that, “That hurts!”

   Angelus released him with a chuckle. “Tickled your fancy, though, didn’t I?” He glanced down at William’s body. “I’ve been doing that since you came. So eager to please, you’ve been.” He dropped his Irish accent and picked up an exaggerated hint of William’s. “Why yes, old chum. Bloody brilliant you are. Such evil genius! I’d love to be just... like... you....”

   William was scared. He didn’t know why he was so scared. Yes, torture he could understand, but something else was happening now, and he wasn’t sure what. What was Angelus after? He didn’t understand it, and he shuddered with a sudden dread.

   “Oh, shh, shh, shh.” Angelus whispered and crawled over him, embracing him warmly like a brother... or a lover. “Do you think I’m going to hurt you?” he whispered into his mouth.

   “Yes.”

   Angelus chuckled. “You’re not as dumb as you look,” he said. “Of course, that would be difficult.”

   William hated himself. What the hell was he doing feeling wounded by a petty insult when he had already suffered ultimate betrayal and endured prolonged torture? 

   Ugh, why, why was he still hungry for Angelus’s approval? It was sick, is what it was. But he’d never had much in the way of friends, and it had seemed as if Angelus… as if the two of them…. But that was dead now, wasn’t it?

   Then what was all this? 

   Angelus sat up, straddling William’s thighs, and looked down at him. “You really are a pretty collection of bruises. And you’ve been so very obliging. So full of breathless adoration. You know,” he said, somewhat casually, “I had been considering bringing you back to Dru in bits, maybe even as a light sugar dusting on a nice evening of making her scream. She likes it when I do that to her, you know. But she has been complaining of being all alone, and... to be honest... she does get tiresome.” He grinned broadly. “Not that I don’t adore her. She’s a masterpiece, is she not? She was a pristine virgin before I got hold of her. And now look what she can do.” He flipped William’s prick. “Got this working properly, didn’t she?”

   His prick twitched. William flinched.

   “So, I’d been thinking of dusting you, but you’ve been so much fun to play with. I suppose she deserves her own toy. So long as you don’t go getting above your place.”

   “Dru’s mine....”

   William kicked himself for needing to say that. And he did need to say that.

   “Nothing is yours,” Angelus reminded him. “She belongs to me. Do you want to belong to her?”

   Tears sparked in William’s eyes. “Please.”

   “Then you need to belong to me, too.”

   Was that all? “I do, then,” William said recklessly. “I’m yours. Just take me to Dru.”

   “You just give yourself to me?” Angelus asked. “That simple?”

   “Yes.”

   “Do you really?” He bent down. “Let’s just see.”

   And to William’s sudden horror, Angelus’s mouth was on his prick, sucking on it like it was a boiled sweet. “What are you...? Ah!”

   Angelus’s tongue was curious, sliding and interested, but it was rough. William’s breath came hard, terror racing through him. “Now, how does Darla do this?” Angelus asked after a moment. “Most of the others you can just shove it between their teeth and it’ll work well enough, but Darla has tricks she pulls....” He moved and tried one, something about sliding his tongue up the bottom to the cleft, and William half grunted a scream. 

   What the bloody hell? Why was he hard, why did it feel so horribly good? No!

   “Get off! That’s not for you!”

   Angelus laughed around his prick, and finally sputtered off it. “What? Not for me? You think you can keep it for yourself? Or... oh, aye, you think it’s all Drusilla’s.”

   “Get off!” William tried to push him off, but he was still too weak, dammit. The effort left him gasping and Angelus laughing.

   “Why do you think this happened, Willy?” His face went hard around his laughter. “I was enjoying you, little brother. I meant to show you the beauty of the slaughter of innocents. I was to show you the artistry in a good kill, and instead you throw it in my face? Go find Dru for a tender tryst rather than take that bride proper with me. You don’t even know what this fine spike is for, do you?” He grinned up at him. “Well, I showed you how mine worked right well, didn’t I?”

   William’s parts still stung and ached from Angelus’s bruising assault from before. His anus twitched at the reminder.

   “If you’d just let me show you how to take a bride proper as you drain her to death with her tears as the perfect bouquet, if you’d stayed with me like I told you, I’d have left you unbloodied!”

   “For how long?” William no longer had any illusions that Angelus had not been planning this from the start.

   Angelus shrugged. “Until I’d tired of your puppy-dog ways. A dog needs proper training.” He bent back down. “You need to learn to appreciate me.”

   The mouth on his prick again, and then William’s bruised anus was being fondled by an eager little finger. 

   “No, no, no, no....”

   There was no fighting it off. There was no escaping the sensation. And there was no denying that this time… this time it felt good.

   William had barely known what was meant when the word “bugger” was passed around the school. He’d known boys at school who had special friends. He’d heard of fraternizing, and been confused by the idea. Angelus had made it very clear what all those whispered absurdities had meant, and it had been brutal, horrible, torturous.

   This was not. Through the tender pain of the bruises, Angelus was being gentle tonight. He’d either licked his finger or, as William still had numerous cuts with half-healed scabs over them, he might have wetted his digit with blood, but regardless, it slipped in and out of him easily. He tried to push Angelus off, but his hands slipped over his shirt, and could not find purchase, could not grip his shoulders enough to get leverage. All that happened was that his hand bunched on the white cotton as if in the throes of passion.

   And it didn’t feel much different. If Dru had wanted to do this, William was fairly certain he’d have been all for it. The idea of Drusilla on his prick, playing the whore for him, twisted in William’s head with Angelus down there below him, and dear god of hell, no, this felt far too…. William shuddered with pleasure he tried to dismiss, but his cursed prick wasn’t consulting him tonight. Drusilla, Angelus, it didn’t seem to matter to the damned thing who was sucking it so determinedly, and that finger inside seemed to be caressing him in a spot that... bloody hell! The fires of a heaven of hell!

   He was going to come, bloody hell, bloody hell, he was going...!

   “Do you want it, William!”

   “No!” He was certain of that. “No, no, no,  _ no! _ ”

   “Liar.”

   He _ was _ lying. His prick wanted the release, and was almost screaming for it, and it jumped as Angelus’s cool breath tickled it, begging for the sensation again. But he wanted Dru! How could he want anyone but Drusilla? She was his dark angel, his goddess of death, his destiny!

   “No...”

   “Come now, Willy, don’t lie to your sire. Tell the truth, now. That felt good, didn’t it?”

   Yes. “No.”

   Angelus licked his prick, and it was almost enough, but it wasn’t, and William’s back arched and his hips tried to follow as Angelus left again. That finger inside him slid back and forth more, and William’s hips bucked, unable to keep still. He was either chasing the pleasure or trying to escape it, but he sure as hell could not ignore it.

   “You want it?”

   “No!”

   “Tell me the truth, and you can have Dru back.”

   Angelus dangled Drusilla like a carrot in front of a donkey. William didn’t have the willpower. He snapped at the carrot. “Dru!”

   “The truth, Willy.”

   But what was the truth? He didn’t want this, but Christ,  _ it  _ wanted it, and god in heaven above, he wanted Dru.

   He sobbed as the truth struck him. He sobbed as if something had broken inside him. Probably because something had. “Yes,” he whispered.

   “What was that, Willy?”

   “I want it,” he whimpered. God, he knew he was damned. He hadn’t even begun to understand what that meant. Angelus was right, he was still teaching him. He was suddenly filled with such love for the man he could have killed him with his bare hands, no fangs needed. “I want it, I want it, take it, I want it....” he trailed off, still half mumbling, and not at all to his surprise, Angelus positioned himself between his legs and unbuttoned his trousers.

   “That’s right, Willy,” Angelus said, sliding in his thick prick where his clever finger had been before. 

    It wasn’t the rough stab like it had been before. It didn’t have to be, he’d opened William’s door wide and slid right inside. William’s prick rubbed against Angelus’s white shirt as he thrust inside him. And he found himself wondering if he ever took that thing off, and what his body looked like underneath his clothes. Perhaps he should take him swimming. Angelus would no doubt drown him under the water, but he could see that white chest glimmering in the moonlight, first. 

    “That’s right! Want me!”

   “Dru…,” William whispered. “Dru....”

   She knew what he hadn’t understood. You give yourself to your sire. Angel was his sire too, now, just as Drusilla was. Nothing was his own anymore. Not even his own body.

   Angelus was rough and determined and William thrust along with him, playing the woman for him, gripping onto his buttocks, all but driving him in further. He was full of Angelus, and the power of it pooled in him, and he grunted as the pleasure finally burst, spurting his revelations all over Angelus’s half open white shirt.

   Angelus grunted inside William for several more thrusts, finally gripping his wrists as he roared his own release. He laughed suddenly, and looked down at William almost fond. “That is a new experience, now, isn’t it?” he said. “Had the warm wet thrusting of a sobbing victim, but a sweet man like you? You’ll learn properly, won’t you?” He chuckled. “Dru knew what would make me happy. Little William.” He leaned forward, letting his prick slide out. “Do you know my name? My first name?”

   He had no idea.

   “It was Liam.”

   Liam. The Irish version of William. They even had the same damn name.

   “Dru picked you out for me, she did,” Angelus said. “I think she picked well.” He patted William on the head. “You’ve been a good boy for Daddy.”

   William shuddered. Something about that disgusted him more than the man’s prick or the thought of the torture he’d undergone.

   “There, now. I feel better. And in the end, wasn’t that what you really wanted, Willy?”

   Was it? He couldn’t remember anymore.

   “Please...” he whispered. “Please... I want Dru, give me Dru, please... want her... please....”

   “Please?” Angelus asked. “Did you say please?”

   “Please. Please.”

   “Who are you asking for her?”

   William hesitated. “You, sir,” he whispered. “Liam, please I beg you.”

   “I’m Angelus now,” he said with a smile. “There. Now you see the way of it. Dru only comes through me. You got that?”

   “Yes. Please….”

   Angelus kissed him, hard, and all William could do was fall under it. With a chuckle of pleasure Angelus left him then, and William couldn’t be sure he was glad or not. Even Angelus and his confusion of pain and pleasure was better than the isolation.

   William sobbed, all alone again, despairing again. And it was then that his prayers were answered.

   “Ah, sweet Willy,” Drusilla whispered, sliding into the bed with him. She was in only her corset and petticoat, her arms bare and soft as they wrapped around him. “Poor Willy, dear Willy, you’ve pleased Daddy you have. He said I could have you back now.”

   William sobbed into her bosom as she petted his head, over and over, her fingers twisting in his thick curls. “I can? I can have you? I can?”

   “Yes, my love,” she whispered. “That’s the whole honey in the hive. Soft and warm and not all alone anymore.” She nibbled hard on his ear, making him cringe with the tiny pain of it. “You’re my own wee dolly. Made out of the mud, and just for me. I knew Daddy would like you.”

   “He doesn’t,” William said. “He can’t…. He… he did….”

   “What needed doing,” Dru said. “Of course he did, William. It’s what proper daddies do. Don’t you know that?”

   William knew almost nothing of fathers. He’d lost his own when he was only a boy. He knew of mothers, but no, not now. Dru wasn’t his mother, she was Drusilla. And Angelus wasn’t his father, he was Angelus, his mate, his chum, his partner in crime. He was utterly confused. He’d thought they were friends, brothers in arms, like the old school chums he’d watched and envied and never been able to cultivate to anyone’s satisfaction.

   But now he had turned Dru unfaithful. (Can you be unfaithful when you have no faith?) He’d betrayed William’s trust. (Can there be betrayal when that trust is in evil?) He’d tortured him into submission. (Is it torture when you ask for his touch?)

   “I don’t understand....” Evil was confounding. All William knew was true wasn’t true any longer. Pain was pleasure, death was life, trust was betrayal... and hate was love. Because he hated Angelus with a passion, and loved the man more than he had when they were only killing together.

   “It’s all right, William. You’ll grow tall and strong in the end. Wither and die and grow strong in the sunlight, dark rose rose rose.” She kissed his brow gently. “Love you, my sweet William. Mummy’s got you now.”

   “Not... William,” he muttered to himself. Liam wasn’t good enough… well, William wasn’t, either. He was stronger than a mere William. He was better than this. “I need to be harder. Need to be harder than bone, hard as a blade, hard as a spike.” He clutched his beloved to him. He was too weak for this. He needed to be hard enough to take it. 

   “You can be Spike, lovey,” Dru said. “I’ll always know who you really are.”

 

***

 

   “She always did. Even when I wasn’t sure,” Spike mused.

   Buffy was silent after his story.

   “You okay?”

   “Well, I’m starting to get why you’re so twisted,” she said in a small voice.

   Spike looked down at her. The small voice wasn’t shyness or horror. Her cheeks were flushed.

   Spike ran his hand down her body. She was sweating and heated and her breath was just a bit ragged. “That story fired you up.

   Buffy gasped and made a small noise of desire. “I’m sorry!” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I know, that was horrible, that was—”

   “Hot. Wasn’t it.”

   Buffy swallowed. She didn’t want to admit it.

   “Like I said,” Spike said. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”

   “It shouldn’t have happened to you,” she said.

   “Maybe not, but it did, and it’s me.” He shook his head. “Look, some of it was pure horror. Some of it got seductive. He danced over the line a hundred times before he got bored of me and picked up a new game. We weren’t lovers for long, or very often, but—”

   “That wasn’t you as lovers,” Buffy said. “That was pretty clear what that was.”

   “We were lovers other times,” Spike said. He was still running his hand up and down her torso. “I told you, I’ve done just about everything. Almost anything you could imagine in the bedroom and outside it.” He whispered in her ear. “And you’re still the hottest, rawest passion I ever encountered, slayer.”

   She gasped and writhed, a more eloquent invitation than if she’d flat out told him to fuck her. 

   He arched his body partially over hers and pressed her gently back into the pillows. “You want me?” he purred against her skin.

   There was a curious beat, and then… 

   “No?”

   Buffy’s voice was small, almost a question, and Spike looked down at her. Her eyes were shadowed, coquettishly looking up at him, and as he watched she bit her lip provocatively, wetting the warm wet flesh with her tongue.

   Everything about her said yes. Her scent, her heat, how pliable she was beneath his strength. She stared up at him, her breath heated, and half smiled as she added, “Don’t.”

   They had a safeword. They didn’t use it much. They mostly only had it so they knew if one of their wrestling or biting matches had got too strong, an indicator that a grunt of pain was not, in fact, a signal to stop. It was a safety device, and not one they actually had had to use much at all. (Once or twice when one of them had inadvertently pulled a muscle or something, unconnected to the sex-act itself.) They hadn’t actually negotiated this directly... but really....

   In the end, he knew her.

   “Stop me,” he said, his voice evil. A second later he had plunged himself inside her, half expecting her to break his ribs.

   Buffy cried out, no attempt at all to stop him, her pussy slick with warm cream.

   They were. They were doing this, they were going there. The danger thrilled him and terrified him in equal measure as the slayer beneath him opened and closed around him, a lotus blossom of raw power.

   Oh, god. They knew how to play with fire.


	4. Chapter 4

 

   “No... don’t... oh, fuck!” Buffy writhed under him, grinding her clit against him, grunting and thrusting and twisting like a mad animal.

   She had never felt like this before. Something similar, yes, back when she’d first started fucking Spike, the kind of powerful addiction to sensation (and him) that she hadn’t been able to turn her back on even when she wanted to. But that was ugly and she hated herself for it. This was naughty more than ugly, and while she wasn’t sure she exactly liked this aspect of herself, it sure as hell was hot.

   “Buffy... fuck you, bitch, hold still... ugh!”

   The bed groaned and knocked against the wall, and yet another picture frame came tumbling from its hook. The floor shook. 

   She’d barely been able to keep her hands off him for days. Dawn rolled her eyes every time she saw them ducking behind a wall. And they were ducking behind walls and surreptitiously grabbing each others asses and doing dirty things to each other under tables pretty constantly and Buffy just couldn’t seem to stop doing it. Spike sure as hell wasn’t complaining.

   “Oh, god! Damn – oh – AHH!”

   A bookshelf that had been wagging back and forth finally gave up and toppled over, spilling books and knickknacks to the floor.

   And Xander finally had enough. “Can you two knock it off in there?” he shouted, pounding on the wall. “If I have to fix the damn window frames again...!”

   “Sorry, Xander!” Buffy shouted through a giggle.

   “Bit busy, mate– Ah!” Spike’s words cut off as Buffy bit him, hard.

   “Just keep it down to a mild war!” Xander called out, then wandered away from the wall still muttering, “None of this nuclear shit.  _ Some _ people are trying to take a cold shower.”

   It took them a couple seconds to regain momentum after Xander left, and by that time the lamp had dropped off the bedside table, despite their slightly less frenetic pace. “Nng, unh, oh, oh, god...!”

   “Ugh... Rrrarr!” Spike came with a roar that probably had Xander turning the shower up to deluge, and Buffy wasn’t far after.

   They lay panting, Buffy sweating, Spike still moaning softly. “Fuck,” he muttered. He’d been muttering that a lot lately.

   “Sorry.”

   “Stop apologizing,” Spike said, though he was gasping like a fish. 

   He dredged up some energy and turned on his side, dragging Buffy against his chest. She nestled against him with a contented hum, and Spike groaned again. These last few days had been very like their first affair, only this time she would hold him, and snuggle with him, and kiss him, and she’d stay and  _ talk _ . All the heat and none of the rejection. He was absolutely down for this.

   So what if it was predicated on his not-so-savory history?

   “I feel bad, though,” she whispered.

   “What? That you’re turned on by my sordid past? So what else is new.”

   “I’m not turned on by the evil,” Buffy whispered. And she wasn’t. He’d done a few test-stories to feel out exactly what it was that got her hot and bothered. She wasn’t turned on by real torture, even when Spike wasn’t the perpetrator. She didn’t want to hear about actual screaming victims, and certainly no one about to die, no matter what happened to them first. But the stuff with Angelus... the things that twisted reality, that edge between want and not-want, the stories that made the fair foul and the foul fair... those were like adding sodium to a chemical fire.

   “I just... I don’t know.” She buried her face in his chest and hugged him tightly.

   “Buffy, it’s okay.”

   “I feel bad, though. Making you relive it all.”

   “You’re not making me do anything,” Spike said.

   “But usually you’re... I mean....”

   “The victim?” He shook his head. “I was making victims all over the place, too, love. I’m just not telling you those stories. Angelus was older and stronger, is all. I’d’ve been slapping him about too if I was strong enough.”

   “I still feel bad.”

   “That you’re getting turned on by stories of me and your ex? Buffy, you had the hots for both of us. I’d be surprised if you weren’t.” He grinned. “Seem to recall you suggesting him and me going at it all covered in oil, once upon a time.”

   Buffy chuckled. “I don’t know if it’s that it’s Angel,” she whispered then. “It’s more like... I know how strong you are. I kind of like the idea of you... made a little helpless.” Spike chuckled himself, and Buffy averted her eyes again. “I don’t know, it turns me on, I guess.”

   “Yeah, I noticed.” Spike bit her ear gently with his human teeth and whispered, “Sorta turns me on, too.”

   “Really?”

   “Yeah, really, I’m in love with  _ you _ , remember?  _ Vampire slayer. _ ” He kissed her forehead. “I’m used to it. Dru started out stronger than me, too.”

   “You sure I’m not, like, traumatizing you or anything?”

   “You’re not making me tell you these things.”

   She wasn’t, though she’d started asking. She’d run out of excuses for why, like applying it to her situation, or asking if it made a difference in his development or anything. She was just straight up asking.

   “My past is there whether I mention it or not, Buffy. It’s not like keeping quiet about it makes it go away. In fact....” He kissed her forehead, unsure how to explain this. “You’re actually helping with it, sort of.”

   Buffy looked up. “What do you mean?”

   “Telling it sort of... gives it to you. Takes it away from him, and from the evil of my past and makes it yours. Ours.”

   “I’m not sure I understand.”

   “Buffy, this... you and me. I know it’s corny as hell, but it’s... sacred. To me, anyway.” He caressed her shoulder with his thumb. “Telling it to you, love, letting you turn it into part of  _ this _ between us... makes it pure. Bollocks, I know, but....” He shrugged.

   “I don’t feel very pure.”

   “Well, I didn’t say virginal,” he said with a grin.

   She chuckled. “Far from.”

   They rolled over, and Spike gazed at the ceiling, Buffy curled up with his arm around her. The room was a mess. Pictures were askew on the walls and that bookshelf... really should have screwed that thing in. “Which one of us is going to clean this up?”

   “That is one thing about the crypt,” Buffy said. “It didn’t have wooden foundations.”

   “I don’t think we can afford to dig our own sex dungeon.”

   “Can we afford replacement furniture?”

   “I keep telling you, there’s no shame in dumpster diving.”

   “Bloodsucking bum.”

   ”L.A. princess.”

   “Jerk.”

   “Bitch.”

   “Fuck you.”

   “Did that.”

   “Mm.” She snuggled in closer. “That you did.” She traced her finger over his chest. He wasn’t so thin and spare as he had been in those days in Sunnydale. His chest had softer edges now, grief and despair no longer cutting into his appetite. She preferred it. It looked healthier. “I do wish I wasn’t like this,” she said. “It seems evil. Sort of.”

   Spike actually laughed. “I know evil. Fantasy, history, stories? They’re not evil.”

   “Tell that to Riley,” Buffy muttered.

   “Hm?”

   “Riley thought anything to do with fantasy in the bedroom was tantamount to cheating.”

   Spike looked down at her. “That pillock doesn’t have a leg to stand on in that department!”

   “I know that now,” she said. “He was okay with outfits, so long as they were mine. He liked my cheerleading uniform. He liked getting me all dolled up in camo-gear, too. But anything that wasn’t strictly him and me, even reading porn, he’d feel it was a violation of what he called  _ us _ .”

   “What, he look down on romance novels, too?”

   “If they had sex scenes.”

   Spike stared at her wide-eyed. “And you put up with this sod for how long?”

   Buffy chuckled sadly. “Too long. I don’t know, he seemed like what I thought I needed. But every time I tried to do something apart from... straight vanilla, he’d get uncomfortable or angry. He even once....” She stopped and shook her head, never mind.

   “What?” Spike wouldn’t let it go. “What’d he do?”

   “He said I reminded him of Faith. It disgusted him.” She heaved a sigh. “Thing is, I was just as violated by Faith that night as he was. More, even.”

   Spike gazed at her. “Is that how it feels?”

   “That’s how it is, isn’t it? She took my body, without my permission, and used it for sex I didn’t agree to. She used it for sex with my then boyfriend, at least, but what if it had been someone else?”

   “Like me.”

   Buffy looked up.

   “She was toying with me a bit that night, too.”

   “You said you only flirted.”

   “It was... heavy... flirting.”

   Buffy glared. “Was there tongue contact?”

   “There was a grope,” Spike said. “But not on target.” There was a beat, and Spike added, “And I nearly dusted. Your body’s hot, pet.”

   Buffy looked disgruntled and rolled over, turning her back to him. He curled up behind her, and she held onto his arm like a stuffed animal.

   “What’s up, love?”

   “That night’s confusing,” she muttered. “Was I raped, or was Riley? He said he’d had a hint, ‘cause she wasn’t acting like me, so does that mean he cheated on me? That was how it felt at the time, but that wasn’t fair, ‘cause he didn’t know. It was my body and my boyfriend, so does that mean my body consented without me? What the fuck was Faith trying to do?”

   “She was trying to destroy your life,” Spike said. “She had taken it and stolen it and was stealing every part she could.”

   “Even you.”

   “We weren’t together then, love.” Spike moved her hair aside and kissed the side of her neck.

   “My relationship with you was still  _ ours _ . We’d fought and bickered and... well. There was that marriage spell. We were....”

   “Best enemies?”

   “Yeah! And she fucked with it.”

   “All she did was get me hot and bothered and saunter off. Didn’t change us much.”

   “Did it stay in your head?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Then she took you, too.”

   Spike flipped Buffy over bodily and glared down at her. “Hey. She was never in my head, you were. And I’ll bet you any money Riley’s hang-ups were his before that bitch got hold of him, right?” Buffy didn’t answer. “Right?”

   “Probably.”

   Spike released her.

   “But it would have been nice to know that clean without her in the way,” she complained.

   Spike leaned on his elbow. “What did she do to him, anyway? He ever tell you?”

   “No. Well, sort of, he said she wasn’t right, and then he had to... the phrase he used was  _ remind her what lovemaking was supposed to be _ .”     

   Spike raised an eyebrow. “So... missionary vanilla?”

   “Probably.”

   “‘Nough to make you wish she’d shoved his  _ what it’s ‘sposed to be _ up his arse and stuffed some sense down his gob.”

   “I should have been the one to do that.” Then Buffy grinned evilly. “Now that’s an idea. ” 

***

 

   “No, Buffy. That’s not love-making.” Riley takes hold of her shoulders and caresses her. “Just slow down. Let me show you what–”

   “Damn sick of men showing me things,” Buffy says.

   Riley stops. “What?”

   “I know what  _ love-making _ is. It’s being honest and accepting, and it’s about pleasing your partner. Not about forcing your idea about what it’s supposed to be.” She takes him by the shoulders in turn and pushes him down on the bed. “Okay, Riley, you know so much. Tell me what love-making is?”

   “Buffy, I....”

   “I said tell me!” Buffy says, straddling him. She runs her hands up his chest and lifts his arms over his head. “Come on, lover. Tell me what real love making is?”

   “Its when two people make a decision,” he says. “A decision to perform an act of love together, a mutual understanding. A sacred, physical act.”

   “An act of what?”

   “Of... um....” He tries to put his arms around her, but she’s holding them down. He frowns. “Can you get off me?”

   “No. Answer me.”

   He gazes seriously up into her eyes. “An act where a woman gives herself to her man. She takes him into herself, and they become one flesh.”

   Buffy’s eyes narrow. “Sounds cannibalistic.”

   “Buffy....”

   “Is that it? Just the act itself?”

   “No. It’s... it’s the need. The need for each other. He needs her to open up to him. She needs him to be strong for her, and treat her with respect.”

   “But  _ he _ doesn’t have to open up for her? Is that it?”

   “I... I didn’t say that.”

   “And he doesn’t need her? Not for anything but the opening?”

   “Buffy, you’re twisting what I’m saying.” He flexes his arms, which she is also twisting. “Let me go.”

   “I don’t want to. I’m being strong.” She leans forward and kisses him. “For you.”

   He lets her kiss him, but he isn’t happy about it. “I know you’re strong, Buffy,” he says. “You need to learn how to be soft.”

    She grins into his mouth. “Soft, huh?”

   “Yeah.” His voice is low, seductive. “You need to just learn how to go with it. Let the motion take you... the rhythm... lay back, and let it roll.”

   “ _ Lay back _ , huh?” She lets her hands slide down his arms, and undulates over him, grinding onto his cock. It doesn’t feel particularly hard. “Like you’re doing now?”

   “No, Buffy. Let me show you.” He rolls her over on the bed and tries to kiss her.

   “Mm, no, you know, I think I’m done with being shown things,” Buffy says through his kiss. He looks down at her, confused. She lifts him, slips out from under him, and then twists his arm up behind his back with her left hand. He’s stuck on his stomach, his arm wrenched behind him, utterly unable to move. “You want to know what it’s like to open up like a woman, Riley?”

   “What the hell are you doing?”

   “Don’t you want to know?” Buffy reaches under him with her free hand and undoes his belt and khakis. “Don’t you?”

   “No!”

   “That’s good.” She yanks down his khakis and boxers in one move, and then shoves them off completely with her foot, never letting him go.

   “What do you mean that’s – ow!” He’d tried to get up. All it did was twist his arm. “Let go, Buffy.”

   “I’m going to show  _ you _ what proper love-making is supposed to be,” Buffy says. “How to open up. Take her inside you. And she can be strong and respectful of  _ you. _ ”

   “Buffy, this is not respect – ow! Dammit!”

   “No, maybe it’s not,” she admits. “Stop struggling, baby, you’ll only hurt yourself.” She fondles his ass, sliding down to his balls and back up, over and over, tickling at his anus. He tries to clench his legs closed, but she forces them apart with her knees.

   “God, no. Buffy, no!”

   “It’s not so bad,” she whispered. “Just ease into it, it’ll be fun.”

   “You let go of me, you crazy bitch – ah!”

   Buffy’s thumb had slipped into his asshole. She laughs at his scream. “Quit whining!” she chuckles. “You know you love it.”

   “Get off!”

   “You just need to learn how to go with it!” she says with a grin. “Let the motion take you... the rhythm... lay back, and let it roll.”

   “Stop it! Get– ow!”

   “Oh, was that too rough?” She tilts her finger so her nail isn’t grating on anything inside him. “You like telling me what I like, what I need to learn, so here. Now I’ll tell you. This is what you like. And you’d know it is if you’d just learn to accept it. If you weren’t so self-involved, you’d see I know what’s best for you.”

   “This... this isn’t... what....”

   “You don’t want this?” she asks innocently.

   “No!”

   “Sure you do,” she says, sliding in and out. “You like strong women, don’t you? So long as they’re not too strong, though. So long as they’ll listen to you. Follow your orders.” She massages inside the tight, hot little bud, and it flexes around her thumb. “That’s what you really like, isn’t it. Girls who know how to follow orders.”

   “Buffy, stop! Please!”

   Buffy tilts her knee between his legs, and sure enough, he’s finally hard. “You don’t want me to.”

   He struggles, but of course he isn’t nearly as strong as a vampire. His hand clenches on the bedsheets and he writhes. But her thumb slips in and out more easily now, and his muscles  are relaxing. “That’s a good man. That’s a man who knows what he wants.” She takes out her thumb and slips in her first two fingers instead, forcing him further open around her. She wriggles them against him inside, finding the prostate, tickling the interior of his cock.

   “God, please stop. Please stop, please... please....” He’s muttering into the mattress now, begging her.

   “You done?”

   “Please....” It’s all he says.

   Buffy pulls out her fingers. They reek, but she doesn’t care. She hitches up her skirt and shifts around Riley, keeping a firm grip on his wrist. His shoulder is twisted as she changes position, but she doesn’t let him go, even when he makes a desperate wrench and tries to pull away. “Now, now, don’t be that way,” she whispers. “We’re not done yet. What else was it you said? To take him into herself and become one flesh?”

   He tries to lay a punch with his free arm, now that she’s in front of him, but she grabs it. He lifts himself up, glaring at her. “Let me go, you sadistic bitch.”

   “You do what I want, first, Riley.” She spreads her legs wide on either side of him and waggles her hips under his nose. “You get me off. Only then will I let you go.”

   “Fuck off!”

   “No, suck off. Learn how to respect your girl, Riley Finn. Bury your nose in it and give me what I want.”

   “No!”

   “Not letting you go til you do.” She shifts her hips, making it clear. “Eat up, Riley.”

   “I’ll bite it, you cunt!”

   “You do, and I’ll break your wrist.” She squeezes hard, and the bones grate together. “I can, you know. You get me off and you’ll go safe and sound. Go on.”

   Riley stares at her.

   “If you’re wondering where the clitoris is, it’s that little nub just at the top of the cleft.”

   “I know where it is!”

   “Could. Have fooled. Me. Now get into it!” She jabs his head down with his own arm, never letting go his wrist.

   “That’s right,” she says as he finally realizes he has to do what she says. Roughly, without finesse, he finally laps at her clit.

   She chuckles. “Trying to hurt me with it? You’ll have to work harder than that.”

   He does. He grinds his tongue against her flesh, using his teeth. When he goes just a little too hard, she twists his shoulder again. “No. Do it right!”

   He eases up, flicking his tongue in and out, and Buffy shifts a little. “A little higher, I’m not enjoying it there. Higher. There. Now go hard.”

   “I know what I’m doing!”

   “Can’t take directions?”

   “Shut up! You want me to—”

   “Don’t talk,” Buffy says, lifting her hips into his face. “Eat.”

   He got back to it, tickling at the little nub, working at it, trying for it, sometimes trying to get away as he thought she was lulled into a false sense of security. But she was lots stronger than him. “Keep at it,” she said the next time he tried to pull away.

   “My tongue is tired.”

   “Too bad. Give me what I want, Riley. Give!”

   He groans as he gets back to it.

   “You hate this don’t you.”

   “Yes!”

   “Want it over faster?”

   “Yes!”

   “Then do it right!” Buffy lets go of his wrists and grabs his head. Shifting her hips, grinding herself against him, she humps his face furiously as he sputters and tries to pull away. She’s got his head, though. Almost smothering him she bucks and shifts until it’s finally enough, and her movement slows, grinding his face hard and steadily into her spasming flesh.

   “Ahh!” she cries out, and then finally releases him.

   He sits up, his face shocked. “This... this isn’t you...!”

   “You know what, Riley?” Buffy says, her tone languid. “Actually, it is. It always was. And I should never have let you think any different.” She sits upright against the pillows. “I’m here if you want me now. Hot and wet and ready for you. Strong. Dominant. Disrespectful. And if this isn’t what you wanted, Riley...?” She shakes her head. “You should have left before we ever started.”

 

***

 

   “It was never like that, of course,” Buffy said. “I was too... shy or something to ever really tell him what I wanted.” She sighed. “Hell, I didn’t even  _ know _ what I wanted.”

   “You were pretty young, Buffy.”

   “Eighteen.”

   “Yeah, eighteen. There’s a word for that. Barely legal.”

   Buffy smiled softly. “That’s two words.” She snuggled up to Spike’s chest, oddly sad. “I really tried with him, you know.”

   “I know.”

   She shook her head. “I spent a long time thinking the breakup was my fault. That I wasn’t there for him enough.”

   “That’s bollocks.”

   “I know that now.” She idly caressed Spike’s arm. “I wasted so much time and effort on… something that wasn’t real. He wasn’t the nice guy he said he was. He was selfish and opinionated and violent.” She shook her head. “And I spent the whole time saying  _ you _ were evil.”

   “I was,” Spike admitted. “I’d have still been gladly eating people if I could’ve.”

   “He wanted to experiment on Xander,” Buffy said. “He was one reason Tara was afraid to admit she thought she was a demon. He didn’t even think twice about what was happening to the demons the initiative caught.”

   Spike gave an involuntary cringe. He remembered those pens.

   “I could never trust him,” she said. “I trusted  _ you _ with the truth about Dawn. I didn’t dare tell him.”

   “Well, I found out about Dawn on my own,” Spike pointed out. “I doubt you’d’ve told me.”

   “I still didn’t worry once you knew. I didn’t think you’d kill her for it, or call the government or anything. I thought Glory might get it out of you, but I didn’t think you’d just go up and tell her. I trusted you.”

   Spike only kissed her forehead.

   “I’m trusting you now,” she added quietly.

   Spike tilted his head to gaze down at her.

   “Don’t tell anyone I’m like this,” she said. “I couldn’t... explain.”

   “What? That you like to force and be forced? I’m the same.”

   “You’re a vampire. They expect it of you.”

   Spike smiled. “It’s no one’s business but ours.”

   Buffy gazed at him very earnestly. “I love you, you know. No one in the whole world knows me like you do.”

   Spike brushed the hair out of her face. “Same.” He kissed her nose. “And you’re glorious. You know that?”

   “So you keep telling me.”

   “And will until you believe it.”

   Buffy wrapped her arm more securely around him and pulled them closer together. “You know... I think I’m starting to.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

   “Did you never get one over on him?”

   Spike looked up. “Hm?”

   “Angel. Were you always the victim?”

   “I was the youngest, Buffy,” Spike told her. “Even Dru was twenty years older’n me. Among all them, I was always the loser.”

   “Every single time?”

   “Yeh. I never won fair against any of ‘em until after I got my soul.” He grinned and rolled over on the bed, fluffing up the pillow to prop himself up. “Now  _ that _ was a good day.”

   “Was that the Cup of Destiny debacle?”

   “Yeah.” He chuckled. “Angel’s damn lucky you still cared about him. I got  _ so _ close to staking the bugger.”

   “Now I know more about you two, I’d totally get that.”

   “Would have brassed you off, though. Not worth it.”

   “Probably not, at the time.” Buffy was thoughtful. “Does that mean you’ve forgiven him?”

   “I didn’t have to forgive him to lov- live with him.”

   Buffy looked up from her vanity where she was taking off her make up, studying him after that slip. He’d been so cavalier about his stories about Angelus, and he was very open about how much he’d loved him when he was a fledge. It echoed Buffy’s own thoughts about Angel much more closely than she’d expected. Did Spike still love Angel, in a distant, hate-laced, complicated way? Was that why he kept insisting that Buffy still did? He probably wasn’t wrong, but every time she tried to pretend she didn’t still have a part of her that loved Angel, he wouldn’t let her get away with denying it. Was it really his own complicated feelings that made him unwilling to let her try and simplify hers?

   “But you always lost to him. You were never driven mad like Dru, wasn’t it hard just being a victim all the time?”

   “I wasn’t,” Spike said. “I was victim for them and predator for everyone else. Besides, it’s not as if I didn’t hold my own around them. Just... had to change the rules of the game.”

   “How?”

   “My idea of winning was how aggravated I could get him and Darla. If I could get them to hit me, I won.”

   Buffy flinched. There was a time when he’d done much the same with her. Years, actually. Even while they were sleeping together. He tilted his head, his eyes surprisingly soft as he studied her stricken face. “Come on, love,” he whispered. “You knew that about me.”

   Buffy left her vanity and came up to him on the bed, straddling and hugging him. “And I used it.”

   “You did what you needed to do,” Spike said. “I was game.”

   “It wasn’t fair.”

   “You could have spelled it all out in a contract ahead of time, Buffy, every single bit of it including the broken eye socket, and I’d have signed up with my own blood.” He hugged her tightly. “I was deep enough in love with you I wouldn’t have cared if it meant dust.”

   “It was still wrong of me.”

   Spike kissed her forehead. “I love even the worst of you, pet. You know that.”

   Buffy looked up at him, resting her chin on the back of her hand. “I think I love even the worst of you. So long as the best is still attached.”

   Spike chuckled. “Well, you know me pretty damn well, by now.”

   She shook her head. “I don’t. There’s so many years of you where I just... I know nothing.”

   “It was all pretty repetitive. Hunt. Kill. Fight. Do it again.”

   “And play the victim for Angelus.”

   “I was mostly wingman. Lieutenant.” Buffy grinned. She loved how he always pronounced that lef-tenent. “After the first year I was only turned into a victim when he was bored.”

   “It must have been confusing, though. With so much pain and pleasure and love and hate mixed in.”

   “Got used to it. Are you asking for another story?”

   Buffy blushed. “I was hoping for one where you won for once. But I guess that never happened.”

   “Well, not really. But there’s a lot of different ways to have a power play, and more than one way to win. If you want confusion and power in sex, the story you need is Darla.”

   “Darla?” Buffy frowned. “I didn’t think you and Darla had anything.”

   “We didn’t,” Spike said with a grin. “That was the point.”

  
  


***

 

   “William.”

   Spike rolled over in his sleep, grunting as Angelus tried to wake him.

   “William, my friend, get your arse out of bed.”

   “Gerroff,” Spike muttered. “I’m sleeping.” He dragged Drusilla closer to him and buried his face in her bosom.

   “Get out of that cursed nest or I open the curtains, Bloody William.” He paused for a moment. “On both of you. It’s nice and sunny out, Willy.”

   Drusilla stirred in her sleep, and shoved her head under the pillow. Spike groaned, dragging himself away from his beloved. “What the hell do you want, Angelus?”

   “I need your help, William,” he said smoothly, his face pure angelic innocence. “Darla and I had another tiff.”

   Spike looked him over more carefully. His nose was swollen, and his neck was bleeding, and his clothing seemed ripped. “What the hell you want me to do about it? You know she doesn’t like me.”

   “She doesn’t like you, William,” Angelus said, dragging on Spike’s arm. “That’s exactly why I need you.”

   He dragged Spike away from his chamber and across the mansion they had commandeered from a wealthy couple no longer gracing the mortal plane. Darla had, as her usual purview, claimed the master bedroom as her personal lair. Angelus had been sharing it with her, but Spike doubted that would be the case for much longer. Those two rarely shared a room for more than a week before something had them fighting again. If Dru had been the betting kind, Spike would have started placing wagers with her on how long Angelus and Darla’s passion would last before the next falling out. Unfortunately, Drusilla wasn’t really one to gamble, and whenever she did she invariably won, so it wasn’t particularly sporting.

   “All right, so you’re at each other’s throats again,” Spike said. “And not in the fun way. What you want me to do for it?”

   “I need you to show Darla what a woman’s really for.”

   “What the hell?”

   The rest of the argument didn’t bear repeating. Angelus had a plan. Spike was supposed to implement it for him. When Spike refused, Angelus threatened to throw Dru to a pack of wild dogs, or into a meat grinder, or eventually out into the sun. There was nothing original in the discussion. But what Angelus didn’t know was that his plan had a fatal flaw.

   No. Darla did not like Spike. That did not mean she hadn’t already fucked him.

   Spike hadn’t dared say anything. The first time it had happened he hadn’t realized exactly what was happening until it was almost too late. He’d been rather drunk, the entire crew having feasted on a party of drunken aristocratic youths that evening. He’d stumbled into bed, passed out, and half woke to find what he had assumed to be Drusilla having her way with his prick. He’d gladly let it continue until something finally dawned on him as being a bit out of the ordinary. The scent was wrong, the feel of her cool flesh had felt subtly different. He’d shaken himself out of his stupor to find it was Darla atop him, and when he’d tried to fight her off, she’d held him down and continued to have her way. He was a newly turned fledge, she was a two-hundred year old darling child of the Master, there had been no way he could have fought her off in the state he was in. And unfortunately, as Angelus had proved, Spike’s prick was a fickle bitch, who never listened to a word its master said, so it had hopped to salute at the slightest attention.

   As he’d tried to protest, she’d complained. Angelus had failed her that day, so she’d gone to get her satisfaction elsewhere. Spike was an idiot, but his body was fine enough for her purposes. Sure he could shout, but that would mean Drusilla would find them together — would her heart break? Would her madness swell? Would it be fun to see? — and if that was not all, what if Angelus should wake and find out? Surely Spike would be dust by nightfall if Angelus found he’d bedded his Darla.

   So Spike had kept quiet, hidden the truth from Angelus, and never mentioned the incident. (Dru may have known anyway, but if so, she never said.)

   The second time it happened was for the same reason; Darla had had another disappointing moment with Angelus. That time it involved chains and blows instead of alcohol laced blood. But the threats and the outcome were entirely the same.

   And after all that fear, all that disgust, all that secrecy, all that wondering what Angelus would do if he found out, here was the sod telling him to fuck the bitch right in front of him.

   “You want me to fuck Darla?”

   “I want you to rape the hussy rough, while I hold her down for you,” Angelus snarled. “Come now, it’s nothing new.”

   “Yeah, ‘cept it’s Darla.”

   “And we’ll teach her a lesson she won’t soon forget, will she? I owe her.”

   Spike made another protest, but the outcome was inevitable. He feared for Dru too much, and, to his own self-disgust, he longed too deeply for Angelus’s approval. This was what Angelus wanted... and he had learned to take victims before at the man’s direction. It wasn’t so very different, this. It wasn’t as if Darla wasn’t a pretty little whore. And he knew Dru needed him to protect her. She wouldn’t protect herself, not from Angelus. She’d lie passive while he tore her very skin off — Spike knew. He’d watched it happen, and placed the strips of demonic leather back after, tending them gently until they healed. And if he didn’t do as Angelus wanted, there’d be the mocking and the jibing and the threats and, perhaps, he’d get around to peeling Spike’s skin off this time. True, Darla might punish him for the transgression later, but he was more afraid of Angelus than he was of Darla.

   Better just to do as the bloke wanted. He finally agreed to the plan with a sigh.

   Darla was asleep when they slunk into her room, lying languidly across the bed at a diagonal, taking every inch of space for herself. The heavy curtains were drawn, but the fire was lit, bathing the room in flickering orange light. She was dressed in a luxurious silk nightgown, never mind the bloodstains. Probably Angelus’s blood.

   Angelus didn’t waste time. He strode boldly forward and seized Darla’s wrists, dragging her closer to the edge of the bed. She woke instantly, straining at him. “Angelus!” she snarled. “I told you to get the hell out!” She tried to yank her arms away, but he’d given himself better leverage, and she couldn’t break free.

   It wasn’t easy for him to hold her down, though. Spike could tell he was straining. “Get into it, Willy!”

   “It’s  _ Spike _ .”

    “Spike.” Angelus stared into his eyes. “Come on, boy. You agreed.”

   He had agreed. He remembered why he’d agreed. But he didn’t like Darla any more than she liked him.

   Darla made a particularly strong pull, and Angelus vamped up to keep his strength. “Come on!”

   Spike came up to the bed, but still hesitated.

   “Get into it!” Angelus barked. “Or you know what happens next!”

   Spike rolled his eyes. “Fine.” This wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t agreed to it this time, after all. He climbed up onto the bed, and Darla flailed, kicking him off. He went flying, hit the bureau and broke the mirror above it. “Bloody hell!”

   Angelus laughed. “You feeble, incompetent maggot. You know better than to let her get a leg up on you.”

   “Oh, you dare, Spike!” Darla yelled at him. “You just dare!” She’d already guessed what was about to happen. It wasn’t as if it was subtle.

   “Sorry, pet,” Spike said, coming back to the bed. “You know the drill.”

   “I get what I want!” Angelus hissed down into Darla’s face.

   She hissed up at him, kicking back at Spike again. “That’s pathetic fimble-famble, Spike!” She wrestled against Angelus. “You do this, I’ll kill both of you! You think I’ll let you off ‘cause it’s all on _ his _ say-so?”

   Spike knew she wouldn’t. Saying Angelus made him do it was no excuse, and he knew it.

   “You know you love it when I tell you want you want, Darla,” Angelus chuckled. “If you didn’t want this, you’d have treated me better.”

   “Buggering lobcock!” Darla shouted.

   “Ungrateful wagtail!” Angelus snapped back.

   Ugh, those two bickered like children. Spike wanted to laugh at them, or knock their heads together. 

   “I am going to rip off both of your stones and turn them into earrings, you hear me!”

   Angelus laughed. “Oh, aye. Spike here can keep that in mind when he sweeps up Dru’s ashes if he doesn’t  _ get on with it! _ ” he snarled.

   “Right.” Spike caught Darla’s calf as she tried to kick him away again, forced it sideways, and slipped up onto the bed between her legs. He was safe, now, so long as Angelus didn’t let go her arms. She couldn’t kick out at him anymore. She thrust her hips, and tried to get her leg up high enough to force him off, but he angled himself so she couldn’t get leverage.

   Despite her thrusting and her squeals, he wasn’t finding this enjoyable. He flipped back her fine silk, revealing her neat blonde-furred cunt. He opened up his trousers, and growled at himself for not being ready. Being forced to perform for Angelus like some kind of pet monkey often knocked him a bit flat, anyway. Darla wasn’t his favorite person, and it wasn’t as if he could eat her later. He pressed his softness against hers regardless, using her struggles as well as his thrusts to convince his traitorous prick that it wanted this.

   “I’ll rip you to pieces, Spike,” Darla growled. “Think you’ll get away with this scot free?”

   “Rather fight you than him,” Spike muttered, and Darla vamped out in response.

   “To hell with you both!” she roared.

   “Already heading there, Darla, my sweet.” Angelus grinned down at her. “And we get to show you what that means. Get into it, milad.”

   Get into it? Spike growled, furious, with himself, with Angelus, with Darla for her bloody cunt not doing it for him. He wasn’t a pathetic pup, why the fuck was this so damn hard? Or rather, not hard. How to make himself obey? He thought about Dru and her sweet, wandering hunger, but that just made him feel bad for not being with her. He tried to think of a warm weeping victim, but… nope. Not that either. Darla was just too cold and strong. So what then?

   The answer was obvious. Who was it he really wanted to fuck over?

   He looked up over Darla’s head at Angelus, clutching onto his lover’s wrists to hold her still for her violation, and bless the devil, there it was. Hate did what Darla’s cunt could not, and his prick finally flickered into life. After a few balancing thrusts he shoved it into Angelus’s lady, the friction harsh and unwelcoming.

   “Oh, you bastard,” Darla growled at him.

   “Don’t I bloody know it,” Spike muttered. He couldn’t keep the disgust from his voice, or his face.

   “Do her harder, Willy, lad, make her squeal!” Angelus laughed. “That’s right! Slap her duff! Do it!”

   “I could do this better if you’d shut your gob,” Spike muttered.

   But Angelus wasn’t planning on it. His whole goal here was to taunt Darla while Spike had his way with her. The trouble was, it wasn’t Spike’s way, it was Angelus’s way, so while Angelus continued to mock her and encourage Spike, Spike kept his own head down and tried to just get through it.

   Thing was, the friction was having the inevitable effect of making Darla slippery. She kept struggling against Angelus’s grip, but after a bit she realized Spike wasn’t joining in the taunts.

   She stopped struggling and went limp, a common reaction after a girl had been raped for a bit, as she realized she just wasn’t going to be able to scream or fight her way out of it. Her face went back to human as Angelus continued to taunt her, “That’s right, you little slut. Just lay back and take it, that’s all your kind is good for,” but Darla hadn’t gone into shock.

   Her eyes fixed on Spike’s, and when he opened his eyes he expected to see hatred there. He didn’t. Instead, she flicked her eyebrow, glanced up and Angelus, and then back at Spike.  _ His fool idea, huh? _

   Spike rolled his eyes.  _ You know how he is. _

   Darla nodded with a bit of her own eye roll,  _ Oooh, yes! _

   Spike tilted his head with a bit of shrug, sort of a  _ sorry about this. _

   Darla went thoughtful and then bit her lip slightly.  _ I’ve got an idea. _

   Spike raised his eyebrow.  _ Huh? _

   Darla flexed her hips under him and gave a bit of a wiggle, squeezing at his prick.

   Spike’s eyes went wide, an even stronger  _ HUH? _

   She positively bucked, and Spike grunted at how good it felt. He finally got it. His eyebrows raised.  _ Really? _

   Darla grinned. She bit her lip again and glanced back up at the still taunting Angelus.  _ It would drive him absolutely mad. _

   Spike chuckled, and Darla touched her tongue to her top teeth. And to Spike’s delight, gave a lustful, sensuous moan.

   He changed tactics, shifting from just pounding inside her to bearing down like he would for Dru, trying to angle his thrusts to give her as much pleasure as possible. He slowed down and added an extra jerk, grinding into her. Darla’s moans went deeper, and she arched her head back, biting her lips together and humming with pleasure.

   At first, Angelus didn’t notice. “That’s right, Spike, milad, make her moan! Make it hell! Fuck it out of her until she learns her bleedin’ lesson and knows how to treat her man!”

   But neither of them were listening anymore. Spike had worked up a good rhythm with Darla’s own thrusts now, and Darla was doing her best to make as many lustful noises as possible, moaning and groaning and whimpering with pleasure, sighing and almost singing with how wonderful it felt to be fucked by Spike. He was pretty damn sure she wasn’t faking anymore. He was certainly doing his best to see to it she wouldn’t have to. 

   Spike knew when Angelus noticed. His taunts sort of tapered off. There was no distinct moment of realization but his excitement in the assault seemed to wane. “Well done, Willy,” he said, much more awkwardly. “That’s....” He cleared his throat.

   Spike redoubled his efforts, groaning himself. It wasn’t faked for him, either. The disturbed tone to Angelus’s voice was music to Spike’s ears. He almost laughed with pleasure.

   Angelus shifted uncomfortably in his stance beside the bed. “I... yeah. You can finish off, now. I’ll take her from here.”

   Spike ignored him, keeping his thrusts slow and steady, drawing it out, the bed rocking evenly like a ship in choppy seas.

   “All right, that’s enough,” Angelus finally said, releasing Darla’s hands. “You’ve had enough, darlin’. You can kick the bastard off, now.”

   They kept at it. Of course they did. It wasn’t about punishment, now. Not for Darla, at any rate.

   “I said that’s enough!”

   Thrust, thrust, thrust, moan, pant.

   “All right, you limey bastard, get off my woman!” Angelus actually tried to lift Spike off.

   Darla’s arms held tight to him, and her splayed legs wrapped around his thighs. Spike hitched his arms around her back and held on, still thrusting, gripping to her fiercely. And Angelus was completely helpless to stop them.

   “Quit it! I said stop! Spike!  _ Darla!! _ ”

   But they had their own goal now, and there was no way they were going to let Angelus take it from them. He tried to pry them apart. He tried to beat on Spike, tear at Darla’s arms. He leapt at them, but they rolled, still fucking, grinning into each other’s faces now as they both fucked Angelus by fucking each other.

   “All right, that’s it. You want to fuck, I’ll show you fucking!” Spike felt Angelus behind him, jamming his knee between his legs. Darla took the initiative and rolled again, not giving Angelus the chance to try and get it in. They rolled off the bed, onto the floor, over the carpets, fucking and thrusting and rolling like crazed weasels. They kept moving constantly after that, their combined strength, awkward as it was trying to stay together, stronger than Angelus alone. He never got a good enough grip on either of them to get his own prick into the action.

   Spike was constantly trying to read her face, so when her moans increased and she nodded he knew it was okay to let go now. Their thrusts redoubled, and they managed to climax almost together, screaming in ecstatic unison while Angelus positively howled beside them.

   As soon as they grunted out the last of their satisfaction, the two separated like positive poles of a magnet, repelled from one another.

   “The devil damn you both!”

   “This was your idea, lover,” Darla grinned at him, her face soft, her hair wild with lovemaking. She reeked of sex.

   “You weren’t supposed to enjoy it, you fucking trull!” Angelus snarled.

   Spike bowed, his prick still out, a mocking smile plastered over his face.

   Darla nodded her approval. “This time, or the other times I had Spike?” she said with a laugh. Angelus attacked her, but she met his arms, and they wrestled against each other in the middle of the room. “You don’t own me, Angelus,” she grunted. “You don’t get to choose what I do or don’t like. I do. And as for you and me, and what I do with my body, I’ll like what I please, even if it’s a feckless idiot like Spike....”

   Spike had already decided on the better part of valor and had chosen to sneak his way toward the door of the room. He left Darla and Angelus duking it out, and went back to Drusilla. She hummed softly in her sleep as he slipped back into bed beside her. “Have fun, my delight?” Dru asked.

   “You know... I actually did,” Spike chuckled. Angelus was probably going to get his own back for this, depending on how badly Darla managed to chastise him, but that didn’t matter just then. However it had happened, Spike had won this round.

   ***

 

   Buffy couldn’t stop laughing.

   “Oh, god! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be finding this funny!”

   Spike smirked. “It’s okay.”

   “No, it was horrible, it was completely evil of, like, all of you, and why aren’t you fucking me right now?” she added, digging her fingers into his arm.

   He obeyed her attempt to flip him, and found her pussy sopping. It was enough to get him hard without any further prompting. He slipped in instantly. She groaned with relief, relaxing beneath him, and squeezed him with her inner muscles.

   “Unh.” Spike’s eyes closed.

   They worked up a smooth rhythm, and Buffy finally stopped chuckling. “Thanks,” she said through heated breaths. She really had felt desperate to have him fuck her right then. God, she was sick.

   “Any time.”

   “Mm....” She held him closely, moving beneath him. Why on earth did she find these stories so fucking arousing? "What did he do to you for that?" 

   "Nothing, as it happened. Darla beat him hard, and by the time he recovered, it didn't matter anymore."

   "Well, that's good," she said. “And I  _ am _ sorry.”

   “No, you’re not, you found it hot.”

   “I did, but... I mean... I know it’s still ugly. I mean... you were raping her. And Angelus was basically raping both of you by making you do it.”

   “Yeah. And that was normal.”

   “That’s not normal.”

   “It was for us.” He looked down at her earnestly. “Buffy, we were vampires. Rape is part and parcel of the whole thing. It’s how we do things. Dru and I were actually pretty rare, loving each other how we did, and even we would force each other sometimes.”

   “Not all vampires rape.”

   “Yeah, we do.” He reached down and bit her throat gently, making her moan. “What do you think biting  _ is? _ ” he whispered in her ear.

   “I....”

   Spike grinned down at her. “How do we procreate, love?”

   He had a point. Of course there were suckers and non-lethal vampires out there who would get consent from their victims before biting. But he was right, all vampires first instinct was to bite and kill whether the victim asked for it or not. Still. “But not all vampires do what  _ I’d _ call rape.”

   “No,” Spike admitted. “Some don’t use anything but their teeth. Some don’t have enough human in them to bother with their bodies at all. But for those who do like to fuck like humans… like this…, ” he grinned as he ground his hips, and chuckled, “they’re more likely to force the issue than not.”

   “But not you.”

   Spike gazed down at her and his smile was sad. “If you hadn’t noticed, I’m a bit of an odd duck these days.” He moved, shifting his weight to one hand and using the other to brush some hair off the side of her face. “I wasn’t always.”

   Buffy pulled him down to hug him while he continued to move in her. It was nice to just be able to have a meaningful conversation while fucking, but she sort of wanted to concentrate now. She also wasn’t sure she was ready for where this conversation seemed to be wanting to go.  She lay passive and accepting underneath Spike, receptive to what he would give her. And then suddenly, without warning, she lashed out, trying to push him off, wrestling against him.

   She’d said nothing, no safeword, nothing, so he caught her arms and wrestled her back, forcing her hands over her head, holding her wrists tight, still having his “wicked” way with her. She fought back, grunting, pushing against him strength for strength, but he was very strong, and she... didn’t want to win. She relaxed and just let him hold her down then, as he stared into her, his soulful blue eyes so deep and so intense it was like being pierced.

   Maybe it was that, or maybe she’d been building herself to asking this all along. “Do you never miss it?”

   “Hm?”

   “I know you still fight the bloodlust. What about the other? Do you never wish you could just take what you wanted from someone? Regardless?”

   Spike regarded her, still pulsing gently, but he seemed to be really considering it. Finally he shook his head. “I like ‘forcing’ you, ‘cause you want me to. I want that, sometimes. But I never liked not being wanted, even when I was pure evil. I never stopped wanting to play it. With Dru, with Harmony, with you. But to actually do it...?” He shook his head again. “No, I don’t miss that. No.”

   Buffy considered this for a long moment as he she felt his weight above her. Redemption was a strange pony to ride sometimes. Acceptance was an even stranger one. And one Spike chose to bait just then. “What about you?” he asked.

   “Hm?”

   “What about you, and your dirty little fantasies.” He said it with a smile, teasing. “Do you never wish you could just go ahead with them?”

   Buffy frowned. “I did,” she said.

   Spike looked slightly confused.

   “No, I did. With you. I didn’t ask before I first jumped you.”

   “Buffy, I was absolutely consenting.”

   “I still didn’t ask. And there were times you’d say no, and I’d fight the no out of you.”

   “Buffy....”

   “I told myself ‘cause you were evil, ‘cause you weren’t a person it didn’t matter. But it mattered. It should have mattered to my soul, even if it didn’t matter to yours.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t miss it, either.”

   “I.... That’s not....” He’d gone still. He didn’t know what to say. They’d been dancing around so many disturbing things these last weeks, and he wasn’t sure where they’d be when the waltz finally ended. He decided to change focus. He began to move in her again with a wicked smile. “How about the other side?”

   She gazed up at him. “You mean being raped?” She half shrugged. “I have been.”

   That wasn’t exactly what he meant. He had planned to try and switch her back to fantasy, but she looked so serious. She also wouldn’t stop moving her hips underneath him, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to stop making love to her. “Buffy that’s....”

   “No, I have. Angel raped me.” She shook her head. “I don’t mean without the soul, if that was even real.” It was real. She was almost sure of it now. “I mean the first time. That was statutory. If someone did that to Dawn at the age I was, I’d be....” She took in a breath. “And then later... the First got him into my head, into my dreams at Christmas. I didn’t consent to that. It wasn’t my body, but it felt like it was. Is that really a difference? And then Faith. I don’t remember it, but.... And then with Riley. When those spirit memories or whatever possessed us at the frat house. It didn’t bug me at the time, but it happened. And then that creepy jacket that RJ had....”

   Spike looked at her. She was getting even wetter, if such a thing was possible, and her temperature had increased. “Did you two actually...?”

   “More than close enough, whatever,” she said, and her voice was breathy. “It’s happened over and over. Even little things.... Xander... when he was possessed by some hyena spirit... and all those creepy guys who tried to date rape me at school... and what with Angel... and Riley... and Willow and you.... ohhhhh!”

   She’d just come, one of the heated, breathless ones that flowed through her body like warm water, leaving her too full of pleasure to even scream. The litany of perpetrators, the list of violations, big and small. They’d knocked her completely over the edge. 

   Spike swallowed.  _ You. _ Had she just been about to bring up what he had done? They hadn’t really mentioned that terrible turning point in her bathroom directly, and he knew they hadn’t for a reason. Because out of all of those things that had happened to her, dreadful as they objectively were, that was the one she’d really felt. He knew it was.

   Or at least, that was what he believed.

   He didn’t know what to do. He went back to basics. “I love you,” he whispered down at her.

   She sighed, and shifted her hips, inviting him to come. It took him a bit, and he had to release her arms to get there, burying his face in her throat, breathing in her beloved scent. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he whispered, his mantra when all else failed him. He loved her. What did it matter what he was or what he’d done, if he knew enough out of all the creatures in the world to love  _ her _ . It was the center of his being, his love for her. It was the focus and the reason for his soul. Whatever she needed, he would do for her. “I love you.”

   She wrapped her arms around him and held him warmly. “And I love you,” she whispered back.

   He found it. He came quietly, a peaceful release, pretending for a moment that all was still clear. Nothing was clear right now. The waters had been muddied as their history had been stirred. He lifted his head and gazed into her, trying to stare into this, this thing between them, the twisted, complicated, beautiful thing that it was. Trying to understand it.

   He couldn’t. He never could.

   But maybe that didn’t matter.

   He rolled aside and pulled Buffy into the hollow of his arm, holding her close, kissing her sweating forehead gently. In the end, they were here, and they loved each other. Whatever happened... maybe that was all that mattered.

 


	6. Chapter 6

  
  


   “Buffy? Earth to Buffy?” Willow waved her hand in front of Buffy’s face.

   Buffy blinked and looked down. “Huh?”

   “You looked like a statue,” Willow said. “Portrait of a slayer? How many slayers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

   “One girl to turn the world,” Buffy said, finally finishing with the ceiling light. She’d gotten distracted. Lifting her hand above her head to screw in the new bulb had made her wrist flex, and something about it had reminded her of Spike, and she’d found herself back in the middle of a sex flashback about him holding her arms down. She hadn’t moved for a good half a minute.

   Willow looked at her hard. “What’s been going on with you these days?” she asked. “You’ve been nervous, distracted. Both you and Spike.”

   “It’s nothing important.” Buffy tossed out the old light bulb and went to the kitchen sink to wash off the dust.

   “Buffy?” Willow sounded very serious. “Is there some new big bad we have to deal with?”

   Buffy looked up. “No. Why?”

   “Because if you’re calling in the big guns, I think it’s important you tell us.”

   “What big guns?” Buffy wasn’t sure where this was coming from, especially since she tended to  _ be _ the big guns. 

   Willow eyes were worried though, and she had on her resolve face. “Look. I recognize that you might not want to scare us. But it’s not fair to keep us out of the loop like this if something dangerous is going down.”

   “I’m not.”

   “We can take it. Do you think it’s something that would be dangerous for us to know? Something only people with demon-powers can handle? I mean, I know we’re not slayers or vampires, but we can help.”

   “I’m not keeping anything.” Jeez, had Willow always been this slow to get the message? “When have I ever  _ not _ told you when something bad was going down?”

   “Well, why else are you calling in Angel?”

   “Huh?”

   Willow looked awkward. “We got the phone bill. I know you called Angel’s number. Well, a bunch of Angel’s numbers, and Faith’s, and....”

   Buffy rolled her eyes. Stupid phone bill. “Oh, god, Willow, it’s nothing like that.”

   “Isn’t it? You don’t call Angel for fun, I know you don’t. There’s too much there between you, it’s not like you call to catch up and chat. Not with Faith, either.”

   “No, it wasn’t... look, I just needed to ask him a question about the past, okay?”

   “About the past?” Willow asked, confused. “What did you need to know?”

   Buffy shook her head, starting to feel majorly uncomfortable. Once Willow got something into her head, she tended to hold onto it like a puppy with a yummy bone. “Nothing. It’s not important. Really.”

   “Buffy, you don’t talk about the past. You don’t like to. And certainly not about Angel and the past. Unless....” Her eyes went wide. “Are you breaking up with Spike?”

   “What? No!”

   How the heck had Willow even made that leap? It felt kind of like Riley deciding she’d gone to have nookie with Angel, despite there being no reason to think that she’d cheat on him. Or, you know, risk unleashing a monster on the world.

   “Well, that was the other thing I wanted to... um.... See, Xander says you’ve been... uh....” She blushed and looked down. “He says you’ve been... fighting... a lot.”

   “No we haven’t.”

   “Um... Xander can hear you. Shouting. And... um. Well. Fighting.”

   “Oh. That. Um. Well.” Buffy blushed and squirmed a bit. “They’re... not exactly fights.”

   “I know... he said that too. That they... would get ugly.”

   “Ugly?” 

   “Ugly... in a sexy way. Sort of. But you’d be... um... yelling....”

   Buffy closed her eyes, fighting back the urge to say something nasty. This. This was why it all had to be so secret. Why she couldn’t trust certain parts of herself with anyone but Spike. “Wish you guys would stay out of my love life,” she finally said.

   Willow looked up. “What?”

   “I know what I’m doing, okay? I know you mean well, but Spike and I can manage our relationship however the fuck we want to. It’s none of your business.”

   Willow went pale. “Buffy, that’s not fair.”

   “Why not? It’s my life!”

   “I just thought we were best friends. If you were preparing for a breakup, I thought maybe you’d tell me. But then I thought you’d tell me if you were being abused, too, and—”

   “What?  _ What? _ ”

   Willow opened her mouth, closed it again, and then went to sit at the table. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Xander thought maybe you needed an intervention, but I said I’d talk to you, and he’d talk to Spike, and that between us we’d—”

   “I’m not being abused, Willow.”

   “I figured you’d tell me if you were. But, Xander says you scream. You’re crying out _ no _ . Whatever he’s doing to you, you’re not liking it.”

   Buffy’s blush deepened. “I hadn’t realized the walls were that thin.” 

   “He… um, says you’ve been yelling pretty loud. When it’s not just breaking furniture. I can... hear it too. Just... not as closely.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t make out words.”  

   Oh god. Buffy felt her blush rising up past her ears. “We’ll try to be quieter,” she muttered.

   “When he’s, whatever... torturing you?”

   “I’m still stronger than him, Willow,” Buffy said, sitting down with her at the table. “We’re just... playing. We have a safe word and everything, we’re just, you know... experimenting....” Willow stared at her, her eyes wide. Buffy couldn’t tell if it were shock or horror, and her head ducked. “I didn’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable.”

   “Doesn’t it make  _ you _ uncomfortable?” Willow demanded, sounding like she was some kind of freak. Or maybe Buffy was just projecting there, ‘cause she sure as hell  _ felt _ freakish. “I mean, I know he’s got a soul and everything now, but after what Spike did to you—”

   “For god’s sake, it doesn’t matter what Spike did—”

   “Doesn’t matter? Buffy, whatever he did to you was so bad you could never talk about it. I know you forgave him now he’s got a soul, but—”

   “That’s not really the reason.”

   “But it was pretty clear Spike tried... well, tried to rape you, and—”

   “Angel actually did,” Buffy retorted. She hadn’t meant to say that. “I think,” she added, and she buried her eyes in her hand.

   “Buffy, what are you talking about?”

   “Never mind.”

   “No. Buffy, what? What happened?”

   “I think... no, I remember more now about the things Angel did when he didn’t have a soul. Spike’s helping me deal with it, that’s all. That’s why I called Angel, I....” She shook her head. “I just needed to ask him about it, okay?”

   “And he said yes? You asked him, and Angel said he... did that...?”

   “No. Not exactly. But he didn’t say he didn’t.”

   “I don’t understand.”

   “He said he couldn’t really remember, ‘cause of the hundred years in hell thing. But... it wasn’t a no.”

   “Oh, if that’s all.” Willow looked relieved. “Angel wouldn’t have raped you. I’m sure of it.”

   Okay, that was an awfully flat response. “What makes you say that?”

   “Because you would have told me if something like that had happened,” Willow said with certainty. “And you never did.”

   “I... sort of remember it.”

   “Remember?”

   “I... had a dream, and... it... reminded me....” Buffy cringed. She didn’t want to get into details.

   “Oh, if you were only  _ dreaming _ . Then it was just a dream, right? Look. We were best friends. You absolutely would have told me if something like that had happened.”

   Buffy wasn’t so sure about that. She was having trouble confessing it even now to Spike, who she knew was a victim himself, who knew her body inside and out, and who she knew wouldn’t judge her harshly no matter what she did. Back then? She could barely bring herself to even think about it too closely, let alone talk about it to a virgin who was a little conflicted about the whole concept to start with. She hadn’t told Willow flat out that she’d even slept with Angel at first, she’d had to confess it after he’d gone evil and she had to explain why. She wouldn’t even let her suspicions be suspicions, not back then. The dream had only reminded her of the dreams and suspicions she’d dismissed at the time. It hadn’t created them.

   Willow was still talking. “I remember Angel was still obsessed with you, but that? Doing that? He wouldn’t have done that.”

   “Wouldn’t he?”

   “Yeah. He loved you, Buffy. I always figured that was why he didn’t do anything all that terrible to you even without a soul.”

   Buffy half laughed. “Right. Don’t say that in front of Giles, or Ms. Calendar’s uncles.”

   Willow shook her head. “Ms. Calendar was my friend before she was Giles’s, Buffy. I don’t mean Angel didn’t do terrible things. But he didn’t do them _ to you. _ He just... did them. He sort of circled around you, but he didn’t really hurt you. And I don’t think he’d have killed Ms. Calendar, either, if she hadn’t come up with the soul spell. I think he was... trying to hold back. Trying not to hurt you, like Spike tried not to hurt you when  _ he _ didn’t have a soul. But Angel screwed up, like Spike screwed up, he couldn’t hold the evil back well enough, so he... did what he could to deflect it. By scaring you and killing my fish and... you know. Little things like that.”

   It sounded plausible.  _ If _ Buffy wanted to believe the absolute best of the man. But after hearing about what he did to people who loved him in the past, she couldn’t believe he’d suddenly change. Darla and Drusilla and Spike... they were all tortured and raped by him. Why would he change his tune so radically?

_  Because it was true love, _ said the heartbroken sixteen year old girl inside her.

   Buffy closed her eyes. “Grow up,” she said quietly.

   “What?”

   Buffy looked up. Willow was staring at her, offended. “Oh, not you,” she said. “I just... I have a hard time thinking that destroying the world and killing my friends was him working really hard trying not to hurt me.”

   “I’m just repeating the things you said about Angel when he came back,” Willow said. “And remember, Spike loved you, but  _ he _ screwed up and hurt you. It makes sense that Angel was the same.”

 Buffy shook her head sadly. “When Spike didn’t have a soul, trying not to hurt me wasn’t something he had to struggle with. It just wasn’t something he wanted to do. Not when he loved me.”

   “Spike threatened to kill you all the time.”

   “Not the same thing. Come on, I threaten to kill Xander all the time myself. Means zippidy.”

   “Spike had a chip, Buffy. It tempered him.”

   “It did, but would you have trusted Dawn with Angelus? Even with a chip in his head?”

   “But Angel....” Willow stopped. “What am I doing? Look, I don’t mean to try and defend him. You knew him better. But you’ve always said how much you loved him, and how much he loved you. Isn’t that true?”

   “Yeah….” 

   “When you died, I knew you’d want me to tell him, so I came down to tell him in person. His face just went dead. You loved each other so much. You couldn’t have loved him like that if he were really all bad.”

   “Couldn’t I?” Buffy asked. “Seems like people she loves being evil is part and parcel of the whole Buffy package.”

   “You’d never have gone back to him if he had… done….” Willow looked uncomfortable. “Look. It’s just... I can’t see  _ you _ as a victim. Not like that.”

   But Buffy  _ had _ been a victim.  _ Spike _ had been a victim. It didn’t matter how strong you were. “It can happen to anybody,” Buffy said quietly.

   Willow hesitated. “I just think you would have remembered before now.”

   “Willow....” Buffy sighed, a bit exasperated. “What with monks messing with our memories, you playing magic-mind-wash, demon blood-poisoning, and spirit possession, it’s a wonder our whole lives haven’t been retconned into some weird ass shape that has no resemblance to reality!”

   Willow was blushing, but she held fast. “Look. I know weird stuff has gone down, but I know the reality was that Angel loved you, and you loved him. And yeah, when he lost his soul it was bad, and scary, but I can’t believe he’d have done something like  _ that. _ Not to  _ you. _ ” She shook her head. “And certainly not without you telling me about it at the time.” 

   “Can’t believe....” Buffy stared at her. She didn’t repeat herself, but she’d realized what she’d just said to Willow. Her whole life retconned into some shape that had nothing to do with the reality.

   Was the whole affair with Angel ever really what she had believed it to be?

   She’d remembered it as pure, and beautiful, a true love. But even without a soul, even with the evil, true love should have prevailed through that loss. Spike... when Spike didn’t have a soul, he’d screwed up, yes, but he’d stopped himself and felt bad about it. Felt bad enough about it that he’d gone through hell to get a soul so he’d never screw up again. Angel... hadn’t done anything like that at all.

_  He really has split himself up, inside, _ Spike had said.

   And now Spike had told her more about what Angelus was really like.

   Was Angel really that different with a soul? Spike wasn’t. Which meant... what? When Angel had a soul, was he really just Angelus with a white hat on? Spike was still basically himself with a new hat; a loving, devoted, snarky guy who still loved punk music and a good brawl, but had substituted his lust for human blood and human subjugation into a muttering fixation on flowering onions and fluffy kittens. She knew enough by now to know he still had all the same impulses, just with a slightly softer angle.

   So what did that say about Angel? What had Angelus wanted from his lovers? It had been very clear in how he had treated the rest of his gang. He wanted to own them, to control their impulses and their desires, to make them dependent upon him, emotionally. This had gone far enough with Drusilla to even drive her mad. It had gone far enough with Spike that it had clearly colored his sexuality, even a hundred years later. And Darla — from what Buffy had managed to understand, it certainly didn’t sound like that had ever been healthy either.

   So what had he wanted of  _ her? _

   Buffy’s thoughts were interrupted by Xander, bursting heavily into the room. “Willow, it’s okay, you don’t have to... oh. Hi, Buffy.” Xander blushed. “Am I too late to stop you?” he asked Willow sheepishly. 

   “You talked to Spike,” Buffy said, without really needing to ask.

   “Um. Yeah.”

   “And you decided he’s not abusing me.”

   “Um. Yeah.”

   Buffy shook her head. “You know, what with everything Anya used to tell us about you two and chains and sexy nurse costumes, you’d really think you’d be less judgmental about this shit.”

   “It was more the broken furniture,” Xander muttered. “Spike’s not always asking  _ you _ to fix it.”

   Buffy smiled, but she couldn’t muster up a laugh. “We all good? No more interventions?”

   “Just...” Willow looked at her. “You know you can come to us if anything bad happens, right? Even if it’s just creepy dreams that mess you up? Or....”

   “Vampire getting too vampirey? Or one of my best friends getting possessed by an evil hyena? Or getting hooked on dark magic? Or...?”

   “Okay, okay, point taken,” Willow said with a laugh. “None of us are angels here.”

   “That’s very true,” Buffy said quietly. “There aren’t any Angels.”

***

 

   Spike left work early.

   It wasn’t as if he was particularly needed, since he was mostly just a supernatural consultant. He didn’t do the real detective work. It was just that he just didn’t like leaving Buffy alone right now. She was okay... probably. But she’d been hyped up, and it worried him. He was afraid that the hyper-sexuality she was displaying lately was an attempt to deflect from the disturbing memory she’d finally accepted. Which was fine, as far as that went, but if the deflection stopped working she’d go full misery-Buffy again, and he knew what misery-Buffy was like. 

   She was getting odd enough that even blind-as-a-bat Harris had noticed. He’d broached the subject that night before Spike headed to work.

   “Are you guys fighting?”

   After Spike had made several attempts at dismissing the question, and further attempts at skittering out the apartment, Xander had plonked himself in front of the door.

   “You know I can just move you, right?” Spike asked with a raised eyebrow.

   “I know a single flick of your arm could probably kill me, and I’m still not moving until you answer my question.”

   There was no hint of fear smell in Xander’s scent.  

   Spike rolled his eyes. Harris was an odd friend. “Buffy’s stressed out. You know how she’ll go to the punching bag and work out the extra aggression?”

   “Yeah.”

   Spike made a slight bow.

   Xander looked nonplused. “Right. And the reason she doesn’t just go back to the punching bag?”

   “‘Cause it ain’t aggression,” Spike said. “She’s working out something else.”

   “What?”

   “Dunno.”

   “Oh, bull.”

   “No. Not sure what to call it, exactly, but whatever it is, it’s working.”

   “And breaking all our furniture.”

   “Well... yeah. But the last time she did this, we took down a house, and I had to totally redecorate my crypt, so we’re actually doing a bit better this time.”

   “The last time she....” Xander’s eyebrows raised. “Was that why your crypt kept looking like a bomb hit it?”

   Spike smirked.

   “Oh, god, oh, god, I did not need to know this.” Xander cringed away from the door, crossing the living room with his hand over his eyes. Then he stopped, and stared at Spike, the bashful prudishness falling away. What Spike had said had finally registered. His crypt. That would have been just after the resurrection. “She’s that bad?” 

   “No,” Spike said casually. “Not this time. She’s coping. But what with Dawn’s stresses at school and the mission we just got off in New York and some stuff she’s been thinking about, it’s getting on top of her. We work it out together, and she’s okay for a day or two. And then we do it again.”

   “And the reason you’re yelling? All the ‘no’s and the screaming?”

   “Coming from both of us, mate, if you hadn’t noticed.”

   “I did. I just... I... worry. About her. I know you’ve got a soul, but when you didn’t you did some fucked up things, Spike.”

   Spike did not say,  _ so did she _ . “I know,” he said quietly. “I’m never gonna hurt her, Harris. I’d rip my own heart out, first.”

   Xander regarded him for a long moment.

   “I really am gonna be late for work if you don’t let me go,” Spike pointed out.

   “You guys know how to be safe, right?” Xander finally blurted. “Don’t pinch off blood vessels, careful with airflow, have a safeword, no stress positions for too long—”

   “And no blood play near any major arteries, yeah!” Spike snapped, annoyed. Xander looked marginally surprised, which probably meant he’d been in utter denial about the occasional small marks on the side of Buffy’s throat, but Spike let that go by. “You spend a hundred years learning how to kill, you learn how not to, Harris!”

   Xander shook his head. “I’m not worried about you killing her. I’m just worried... you’d go too far, and she’d break up with you.” He turned his back on him, looking nervous. “You’re good together. I don’t want to see it fall apart.”

   Spike’s lips spread into an involuntary smile. “Thanks, mate,” he said. “We’re good, I promise.”

   “You’ll let me know if you two start imploding?” Xander asked. “‘Cause I’d help any way I could.”

   “Just let her come to you if she needs to. Don’t push her.” He took up his coat from the hook. “Now I really do have to go. From what my boss said, I think a Chandra demon is having kits in the attic of a school....”

   “Is that dangerous?”

   “Only to the air vents, though I suppose the teachers could pass out nose plugs. They don’t speak English, I gotta translate and help relocate the nest. Later.”

   “Later.” Xander looked up. “And Spike? I meant it. You’re good for each other. I want that to keep on.”

   “‘Preciate it.” He gave Xander a wave and went off to play social worker to the demon underground. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to play social worker once he got home. He never knew if he was any good at it, despite caring for a crazy woman for a century.

   He skipped out as soon as the homeless Chandra demon understood it had been promised a safe refuge in a demon half-way house, and its half-starved kits were each given a freshly killed rabbit to burrow into. He’d washed the rabbit blood off his hands and took off for home.

   Xander was asleep. The lights were all off in the apartment. Spike half hoped Buffy would be off on a patrol or something, but no. He felt her presence before he opened the bedroom door.

   Maybe he’d been smelling her tears. The scent hit him hard once he came in. All the lights were off except the tiny one above her vanity, and she was curled up holding Mr. Gordo II, the one Dawn had found in the flea market and snapped up because it was a dead replica of the one Buffy had lost when Sunnydale fell.

   “Buffy....”

   “Hey,” she said, and her voice was deceptively casual. “Good night at work?”

   “Yeah, what’s up, love?” Spike came up and knelt by her side, not even bothering taking off his coat.

   “Nothing,” she said, wiping another tear away. She wasn’t shaking, there were no sobs, just tears.

   “What’s the matter, baby?”

   “Nothing, there’s nothing, I just... I started going over....” She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment. “Going over what I remember about stuff, and I... don’t like....” She wiped at her face with an air of exasperation more than grief. “Sorry. This started like half way through, and it’s pissing me off.”

   “Halfway through what?”

   “This,” she said. She pulled a notepad off the vanity and studied it with a tearful frown. “I made a list... a list of all the things I remember that I really loved about Angel. All the... the moments I remember that were, like... fluffy clouds and butterflies and destiny, and....” Her frown deepened. “And then I staked them all. So. There’s that.” She set the list back down on the vanity and rubbed at her face, again seeming more annoyed than upset.

   “Mind if I take a look?”

   “Go ahead,” Buffy said with abandon. She pulled Mr. Gordo II tight to her chest and frowned over the top of him, her jaw set.

   The paper had been split in half with a wavery line down the center, and left side of the page said,  _ Remember, _ at the top. It was not a comprehensive list. Spike couldn’t interpret all of it. The first entry was  _ Mystery guy come to help. _

   The other side of the page had another interpretation.  _ Vampire who knows what’s going on but won’t tell. _ Underneath that another note had been added,  _ Stalked outside my school when Chosen. “Saw your heart.” Target already. Fifteen.  _ _ FIFTEEN. _

   The whole page was full of these.  _ Hid in house, protect from gang, _ with its corollary,  _ Lied to get an invite. Lied. LIED. _

_   First kiss, diary, trembles. _ The other side,  _ Vamped up to bite me! _

_ Gave us the codex for the prophecy. Came to save me,  _ turned to,   _ Xander “no breath.” No  _ _ breath?!? _

   It went on and on.  _ Tell me about Drusilla. Do you love me? Confession of sins  _  Became  _ Demanded love as price for truth. (First time either one said it.) _

   It finally ended at  _ Christmas, stay away for protection, perfect love, suicide to protect, _ which became,  _ Raping me would have made perfect happiness. Suicide threat unless I took him back. _

   “Christmas was where I had to stop,” Buffy said. “I was pretty sure I knew where I was by then, I didn’t need any more.”

   Spike looked up from the paper, horrified. “Buffy... you didn’t....”

   “That’s all the shit he did  _ with _ the soul,” she said tiredly. “I was going to make another page with the soulless stuff, but you know, I think I’m good with what I got.” She scrubbed more tears away. “This is stupid,” she said, looking at her wet hand with resentment.

   “Okay,” Spike said, tossing the note pad down. “Okay, come on, this....” He wanted to catch her up and protect her from everything she was looking at inside her, but there was no doing that, and he knew it. He didn’t know what to do. Every thought in his head was telling him different things, that one action or another would be wrong. Finally he gave up and just decided to go by instinct, since he was bound to screw up regardless, he might as well not second-guess himself while doing it.

   He scooped her up from the chair and carried her to the bed, curling her inside the strength of his arms. 

   “I’m okay, Spike, really,” Buffy said. “It was all done long ago, I’ve lost nothing, right?” She shook her head. “I don’t even know why I’m crying, it’s stupid.”

   “You just lost a core dream you built half your  _ self _ around, love.” Why on earth had she done it? What was she thinking?

   “ _ Dream, _ Spike. It was never real.” She giggled, half hysterical. “None of it. And the things I did... the people I tried to hold up to that ideal... hell, even  _ Angel _ didn’t hold up to that ideal! After I came back to life, I went to see him, and he didn’t match what I’d thought he’d be.... He hadn’t changed. I had. And I kept throwing him in your face, announcing  _ Angel was good!  _ and, god, no wonder you went off to get a soul!”

   “There were a lot of factors to that, love.”

   She shook her head. “I always remembered it as a real affair, you know, something powerful and loving. But his actions... they don’t make sense at all. None of them, not if you think of him as a good guy.” She sniffed. “They make sense if you see me as his victim, though.”

   “Buffy....”

   “No, if I write out his actions assuming he meant well, it’s just crazy. He’d have helped me more. He’d have been honest. He’d have….” She scoffed. “How the hell did I ever think that was true love?”

   Wow. That sure sounded like something a young and romantically innocent fledge once tried to believe. “You were young,” Spike said quietly. “And he used every trick in the book to seduce you. So when the iffy stuff came, you didn’t know what was real. You were already so heavily invested, you couldn’t separate what he’d made you do from what you wanted to do, and you got so twisted up you could barely think around him, let alone sort out if who you were with him was who you wanted to be at all.”

   Buffy didn’t respond, except for two more tears that slipped from her eyes.

   Spike kissed her forehead. “Oh, Christ, Buffy, why’d you do this to yourself?”

   “I told Willow about the dream... the rape. She started unloading all this stuff on me about how Angel wouldn’t do that.”

   Spike felt his fist clenching as he mentally prepared to go metaphorically bird-hunting the second Buffy didn’t need him there.

   “It’s not her fault,” Buffy said, squeezing his arm. She’d felt his tension. “She was just repeating the stuff I’d told her myself. It was weird, it was like I was having a conversation with my past me.” She shook her head. “And I realized past me sounded insanely naive, and creepily eager to believe the best of him.” She burrowed her head into Spike’s chest. “I don’t know now if he really loved me at all.”

   Spike considered this, and then sighed. “I think he did,” he said. “As much as Angel can. But he doesn’t understand how. Even now, with him all helping the helpless and that rot, love isn’t something he understands instinctively. So he loved you as he loved his victims, playing the same games, doing the same seductions, and in his mind it was okay, ‘cause he didn’t plan to eat you after.” He shook his head. “Love isn’t brains, it’s blood. He tried to reason it out, and his reason was a vampire’s. He  _ hunted _ you into being his lover, ‘cause he wanted you that way. That’s all.”

   He brushed Buffy’s hair away from her face. “And you did help him, love. You changed him.”

   “He fucked me over.”

   “He did, and he felt bad enough about it that he actually bothered to go try and be good after rather than just play the part to get something. He still screwed up. A lot,” he added. “But you made him learn how to mean well.”

   “So long as he had a soul.”

   Spike opened his mouth and then sighed, unable to find a retort to that. “Well. Yeah.”

   Buffy took hold of Spike’s hand and fondled it. “Before the soul... but after you fell for me, did you want to be good? Like, really?”

   Spike took in a deep breath. “Dunno,” he said. “I was on the fence a lot. I kept wanting to go after the yummies, but every time I had a victim in my arms, I hesitated. That hesitation didn’t come from naught.” He thought about it. “Dawn,” he finally said. “I loved Dawn, she was a sweetheart. It wasn’t just for you I wanted to save her. Was that good?”

   Buffy smiled. “Yeah,” she said softly.

   They lay quietly for a long time, Spike caressing her hair, Buffy still fondling his fingertips. “What do you think he’d have done to me?”

   “Hm?”

   “Angel. Do you think he’d have killed me?”

   “We both know he would.”

   “No, I mean... how? I know you said he’d save the rape them to death for the end game.”

   “Buffy....”

   “No. What did he do, in that end game? How bad would it get?”

   “Bad.”

   “But, like,  _ how _ bad? What would he want from those girls?”

   “It got pretty ugly, all right? Ugly and slow.”

   “Did you watch?”

   Spike didn’t want to answer, but he also didn’t want to lie. “Sometimes. I usually found it boring, after a bit, though Dru and Darla thought it fun.”

   “Could you show me?”

   “What?” Spike stared down at her. “Are you off your nut?”

   Her eyes were unfocused, a thousand yard stare into the middle distance of the past. “I want to know what he wanted to do to me if I’d lost. Not just hear it, know it.”

   “He was going to torture and kill you, right?”

   “That was what he wanted to do without a soul. So with a soul... he still wanted to.”

   “No, with a soul he—”

   “Was the same guy, just with a conscience,” Buffy said. “With the soul he wanted to, but wouldn’t let himself.”

   She was probably right.

   “What did he want, Spike? You’ve seen it. What did Angel want to do to me?” She finally looked up at him. “Can you show me?”

   Spike knew that look. It was desperation. She’d torn her soul out and left it bleeding on the floor, and she needed a reason to put it back. And she was Buffy. If he didn’t do this, she might crack, do something stupid, and get herself killed on the job.

   “I can’t,” he said quietly. As the despair slowly sank over her shoulders he added, “Not yet. I need to prepare a bit.”

   She looked back up.

   “There’s some stuff I just can’t do, I’m not breaking your bones.”

   Buffy shuddered.

   “Give me till tomorrow night. I’ll see what I can do you, then.”

   Buffy nodded. “That works.” She got up out of his arms. “I’m going to take a bath.”

   Spike was left alone on the bed in a room reeking of Buffy’s tears. He idly wondered if there was a way of staking Angel from ten thousand miles away through a hundred years of accumulated hatred. If so, he was sure the bugger was already dust.

  
  


***

  
  


   How to prepare for something like this? Wasn’t easy. First step, get all the innocent bystanders out of the way. Spike made them a reservation at the nearest bar and grill, and told them to hit a movie after. He figured that should give him and Buffy enough time.

   Then he set up the tools he’d need. He was a minimalist, so he didn’t really need much. Mostly he just moved some things and cleared some important spaces.

   Then he double checked that Buffy absolutely meant this. “Angelus, yeah, not Angel? ‘Cause I can do Angelus. But if you want an Angel recreation, all you need me do is run a hundred miles away from you and brood in the dark. Oh, and pitch a fit every time you get a new boyfriend.”

   Buffy chuckled. “Yeah. You sure you’re okay with this?” She was double checking, too. “You can say no, and that’s okay, I’ll just try and meditate it out on my own or something.”

   More tears? Yeah, no. He was not down for that. “It’s good, Buffy, I get what you’re doing.”

   “This isn’t like Drusilla, you know. I’m not going to go insane or anything if you don’t.”

   He wasn’t so sure about that. “If you’re sure, I’m sure.”

   Buffy blushed, and her eyes were hollow. She hadn’t been able to sleep. He knew, because he hadn’t, either. “I’m sure.”

   “All right, then.”

   They waited for everyone else to leave, barely meeting each other’s eyes until Xander bustled out with Dawn, and the door closed. Then their eyes met, and held, for a long, long moment.

   Spike was counting.  _ Five, six, seven, they’re almost to the stairs, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. Give them a minute to hitch up a coat or something. A few minutes for the front door. Then one, two, three, let them get to the corner, _ mostly to fill up his mind as his eyes searched Buffy’s waiting for some indication that she was going to hate him for this. All he saw was a nervous hollowness... and her eyelids were still shadowed.

   Buffy was nervous. She had tried to sleep, but couldn’t. He was right, she felt as if she’d utterly hollowed herself out inside, and she wasn’t sure how to fold herself back together around the empty core. Spike wasn’t wearing his coat. He had buttoned up one of his overshirts, which wasn’t his usual style, but Buffy hadn’t mentioned it. She just kept staring into those heavy blue eyes, and didn’t know either how to stop what they’d arranged was going to happen next, or to ask him to just get on with it.

   After a moment his eyes closed. When he opened them again, they were yellow and demonic. Without a word he lunged at her, backhanding her across the face. She was startled, and fell off her chair. She was about to leap back up and fight, but Spike knelt down. “Now, now, darlin’, I thought you’d just lost this fight?” he whispered into her face, holding on to the collar of her shirt. “You’re weak, you’re tired, you’re bruised. No friends, no magic, and you’re broken inside. If you’re fighting at all, it’s gotta be weak, right?”

   Buffy stared at him. Spike’s accent was all wrong. It was Irish.

   “I...”

   He cuffed her again, the back of his hand against her face. “Shut your gob, bitch. I like my girls quiet.”

   Buffy’s heart rate skyrocketed, and she stared in horror at her boyfriend. What the fuck had she just unleashed?

   He didn’t wait long for her to respond to that. Instead he lifted her by her shirt without looking at her, dragging her behind him almost casually. She cried out, almost instinctively, “Hey wait... stop!” But that wasn’t the safeword, and they both knew it. He hauled her across the living room and into their bedroom without ceremony, where he threw her into a corner.

   The corner used to hold her hamper, but that had been removed. Her head hit the wall, not too hard, but her ears rang. “What are you doing?” she murmured through the ring.

   “The absolute worst I can,” he snapped. He snatched something off the windowsill and tore at it. “And I meant it when I said I like my girls quiet.” He held a strip of something up to his mouth for a moment before slapping it across hers.

   Buffy was startled at the duct tape suddenly over her mouth, but before she could freak out she realized Spike had licked the bottom half of the tape before slapping it over her lips. Her lower jaw could still open, which meant she was actually still perfectly capable of talking. (Of using her safeword if she needed to.) But the implication was clear. Angelus would have gagged her. He wouldn’t have wanted to hear anything she had to say.

   It was dehumanizing. She shivered where he had thrown her, and tried to get back up, but he forced her down, slamming his foot into her chest. He knocked the breath clean from her and used that opportunity to flip her, jamming her hard against the wall. That was what he’d done. He’d cornered her. Never let yourself get cornered, she’d learned that fighting. She tried to push off, but he didn’t give her much leverage, and... she was weak. Of course. Right.

   Another blow and her knees buckled, and she let them. She was on the floor then, and she felt his knee in the small of her back, and something cool and clanking was yanked over her wrist. At first she thought it was chains, but it was actually manacles. She yanked one hand away, but he grabbed it again, and twisted her shoulder back painfully as he wrestled the cuff on.

   “Don’t you think I’m scared of you, darlin’,” he whispered low. “I just know better than to let you get one over on me. You might get delusions, and then where would we be, eh? Might have to kill you too quickly.” He yanked up on the manacles, which had chained her hands tightly behind her. Her shoulders twisted, agonizingly. She whimpered softly, trembling again. Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit...! This was already bad. And he hadn’t even started yet....

   He dragged her across the room again, this time by the chains, and then yanked her arms up behind her back, bending her over as he pulled her to stare into… oh, the closet. Of course, it had to be the fucking closet. That was why he’d piled their clothes and gear by the dresser.

    She realized it wasn’t actually the closet he was putting her in, but the door frame, as the wall above on the inside had a line of hooks, probably to hang hats from. But apparently they were strong enough to hang a bemanacled slayer, as well. It hurt, her shoulders felt wrenched out of their sockets. She couldn’t actually stand upright, her shoulders weren’t meant to twist that far. She was flexible, but she was still left dangling forward at a tortured angle, her head nearly at the back of the closet, too desperate to support even the little weight on her shoulders to try and kick out at him.

   She whimpered louder, keeping her mouth closed as if the tape were working (because that was the fucking point of this whole thing) but she couldn’t just keep quiet, either. It hurt too much.

   “Now,” he said in his smooth Irish accent. “Is this not a pretty picture? A well-hung girl, just where she deserves to be.” He slipped into the closet beside her, his yellow eyes hard and harsh as flint. She whimpered at him, and he chuckled, showing his long, pointed teeth. “Such pretty music she makes. Shame I don’t have an audience. I’d call up the others to admire, let them see the beauty as she bleeds.”

   Bleeds?

   He read the question in her eyes, because his smile broadened. “Oh, right. Forgot something.” He moved fast and she gasped as a sharp point stabbed itself into her belly.

   It didn’t stab deep, but he was fast, and it was scary as fuck. It did hurt her skin. And a second later she heard her clothes ripping. “My sweet Dru would just use her fingers for this, of course,” he purred. “Really ought to work on developing my claws, but ach, it makes it so hard to catch the ladies when they can see your sharp edges.”

   He continued to slice at her flesh and rip at her shirt. When he came up to her collarbone she could look down and finally see he was using some kind of fishing knife. It had a thinly serrated edge which was making short work of her clothes, but she was relieved to see the painful scratches she was feeling were only red lines on her skin, not actually bleeding. Close enough. They still hurt. Kind of a lot.

   Her shirt was shortly in pieces, and he let it fall to the floor. With his grin growing larger he used the knife to cut away her bra, letting the tip of the blade touch her throat. Her breath came hard through her nose as the danger tickled at her jugular. She didn’t dare move.

   But god, her shoulders!

   Her bra fell away, and he moved the knife, slicing lines down her torso until he came to her pants. He didn’t bother with the knife there. With a sharp yank he dragged them down around her knees, not incidentally pulling more on her arms. She screamed. She couldn’t help it, it hurt. He glanced up at her, but she bit it back and clenched her jaw. She was going to see this through, dammit.

   His nostrils flared. “This would be one of those  _ scream all you like _ situations, girl. Enjoy it while you still have the breath to scream.”

   He stood up, leaving her pants around her ankles, effectively hobbling her. She was otherwise stark naked now, dangling from the doorframe, her butt in the air. And to her shock and horror, he brought the knife back into play. He scratched something on her back — a cross? Was that it? — and then, “Ah!”

   He had put the hilt of the knife  _ inside _ her. No preparation, no warning, nothing, one second he was “cutting” her with it, and the next she was penetrated.

   She had no doubt what end would have been used if this hadn’t been a game.

   Tears welled up in her eyes, and she let them fall. God, this was horrible. It was horrible, hellish. Already. And he wasn’t done yet.

   She felt something tickling at her anus. It was his thumb, slippery with lubricant as it happened, but he whispered, “That’s right. Slide in with your own sweet blood. One of my favorite tricks, that.”

   He jammed it in hard, over and over, then switched to his middle finger, probing deeper and harder, his hand fucking her roughly as her shoulders were wrenched further and further. She grunted and screamed again, but did not say a single coherent word.

   She waited for his cock, but it didn’t come. After he’d fucked her hard enough her flesh tingled, he pulled his fingers out, leaving the knife hilt in.

   But then he reached up beside her and turned off the light in the closet.

   Darkness shrouded her, and he walked away, turning off the bedroom light, closing the door.

   He had vampire hearing. Of course he could still hear her through a closed door. But it was pitch dark with the sun-blocking curtains shielding the streetlights, and all the lights off. He’d even removed the digital clock. Naked, alone in the dark, twisted out of shape, that blade still dangling between her legs, and she didn’t dare flex to try and shove it out, because maybe it was the hilt inside her, but the blade itself was somewhere in her nether regions, and you don’t fuck like that with blades. And had he left a fan on? Because it was suddenly fucking freezing.

   Goose flesh raised on her skin, and her breath came even harder as the tears flowed faster. She was cold, but her face was hot. What the fuck was she doing? What had she ever done, letting any of this happen to her? Her shoulders were on fire, how long was he going to leave her like this? She tried to change positions, to ease her aching shoulders a little, and she did, but only by putting strain on her legs that was just another kind of hell, and god, that thing inside her....

   She sobbed.

   And he didn’t come back. How long had she been here? How long would it have been if this had been real? Hanging in pain, gagged, bleeding, naked, humiliated, abandoned. That would have been her fate....

   And she still had the feeling he hadn’t even started yet.

   She had no idea how long she was left there, since it was a while before it occurred to her to count. She counted breaths rather than seconds. It was less than two hundred breaths before he came back, which probably meant less than ten minutes since she was breathing fast with the pain. Her hands had gone numb, and her back ached, her toes were starting to tingle as she supported herself, and her shoulders screamed. Ten minutes.

   Angel would have left her far longer. She knew that.

   “Let me down!” she demanded as the light level came back up in the room. It was not a lot of light. He seemed to have brought in a candle.

   “I see your gag slipped,” he snapped, pulling the knife from her. “We’ll have to sort that.” He set the blade down first, at least, but then he slipped past her into the closet and ripped the tape from her mouth. She opened her mouth to speak, and he slapped her face. Hard. It made her back hurt even worse. He’d added another piece of tape to her lower jaw, and her cheek stung. At first she thought he’d missed his target, but no. “Try and talk with a broken jaw,” he dared.

   Buffy’s head hung. God, this was awful. “Please....” she whispered.

   There was a hesitation, and then a viciously cruel laugh. It made her feel ill. “You think I’ll set you free to strike me?”

   “What are you, a coward?” Buffy demanded.

   He kneed her in the stomach, knocking the breath from her again, and then hit her upper arms, each of them, hard. “There. Broken arms, broken jaw, I’d like to see you fight me now.”

   Then there was a clank, and Buffy fell to the floor with a thump.

   She could not lift herself up. She lay as if her bones had turned to jelly, but at least her arms weren’t wrenching so hard on her shoulders. They were still numb, though, and every muscle already ached. She felt him yanking her pants the rest of the way off and kneeling between her legs, and she couldn’t even really care about that. He was, as it turned out, only unlatching her manacles. He tossed her arms over her head one by one as he freed them, and it was only then that she realized he’d slapped pieces of duct tape on each of them, too. She’d been too numbed from the stressed position to feel it. Broken bones. She closed her eyes. Why wasn’t she fighting?

   She hurt too much to fight.

   More tears stung her eyes, but she didn’t have time to wallow in misery. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the closet on her ass.

   She squealed, embarrassing herself by the noise. It was inhuman. She’d been made less than human, she’d been reduced to this... whatever this was. A plaything for a sadist.

   And he knew it, too. He flung her down on her back and towered over her, a shadow of darkness with yellow vampiric eyes glimmering in the dim light. “You always felt this, didn’t you? You always knew this was how it was going to be. You and me. Life and death.” His Irish accent trickled like maple syrup. He chuckled. “You know death always wins, in the end.”

   No. No, it didn’t. She knew it didn’t. It didn’t have to be like this!

   She struggled to sit up suddenly, to maybe fight her way out of this, but he kicked her with his bare foot, knocking her back on the floor. Her head met the edge of the bed with a real bang, and she stopped a second.

   He did too, and after a second to assess damage all she did was sit up. “Do. Your. Worst,” she dared.

   His voice, if possible, grew even darker. “Never say that to a vampire.” 

   He was on her then, arched over her, his hand around her throat, his body heavy over hers. She knew this was dangerous. She could choke  _ him _ out; he was a vampire, a loss of breath or a broken hyoid meant nothing to him. But he could really hurt her if he wasn’t careful. 

   “We want to hunt you, and take you, and murder you, you got that?” he murmured as he held her. Oh, god, she couldn’t breathe. It was already dark, so she couldn’t see if her vision was already fading. Her fear levels spiked. “We want your blood, we want your body. We want the scream and the squish and the crunch, we want the rush of it.” He held her down, and she tried to pull in air she could not reach. Then he let up a little. She pulled in a breath, and whoa, the light did increase a little. “There’s an art to this, you know,” he added, his Irish accent thickening a little. “A certain... poetry.” He shook his head in the darkness. “And you thought you were the hero. You were only ever the victim. And you always knew it.”

   She trembled, breathing in precious air. “I may be the victim,” she said through clenched teeth. “But that doesn’t mean you’ve won!”

   “Don’t fool yourself, little girly. I own every part of you.” He grabbed her by the hair again and lifted her up. He got up on his knees and opened his fly. “Suck it.”

   He was barely hard. That was interesting. “Fuck off.”

   He grabbed her hair. “Suck it, or I kill your little sis.”

   “You’ll do it anyway!”

   “I’ll do it badly. I’ll do to her what I just did to you. Or make her into one of my own little minions, would you like that?”

   “You’ll say anything!” Buffy snapped up at him. “You think I’m suddenly going to believe one of your promises when all you do is lie?”

   He reached aside and grabbed the knife, shoving it right up in her face, almost against her eye. Okay. That was scary. “Which would you rather have down your throat, this, or this?” He indicated his cock and his blade.

   And she opened her mouth.

   He didn’t actually let her suck. As soon as her mouth opened he grabbed her head and pounded. She tried to keep her tongue back to keep him from hitting too deep, but he was strong, and she was weak — she actually  _ was _ weaker by now — and she needed to breathe. After a while she couldn’t help it. She gagged. He pulled back, and she fell over, coughing and sputtering, still feeling the urge to vomit a little. But he was finally properly hard now. And she was pretty sure what that meant.

   “Oh, don’t,” she whispered when he shifted positions.

   He hesitated. “How are you going to stop me, girl?”

   Buffy knew how to stop him. And she didn’t take it. The truth that she didn’t take it made her head sink. He grabbed her by the armpits and hoisted her bodily onto the bed. He threw her down and lifted both legs over his head, holding them apart as he stood by the bedside and thrust inside her.

   She felt weary, simply enormously tired. The rape was nothing, after everything else. Beaten. Broken. Bleeding. Humiliated and tormented, and okay, now he was raping her. Of course he was. So what was different about that? It was all a kind of a rape, wasn’t it? Taking her power. Stealing her choices. Forcing her body. Did it matter why he did it? This was what he’d always wanted, from the moment he’d seen her. Soul or no. Was it love or was it hate, did it have anything to do with who she was, or what she wanted, or what she wanted to be? No. It had never been about her. That was always the point.

   All right, then. Now she knew. 

   She was almost half asleep when she realized she was done, and he was still doing exactly what she’d asked. “Safe,” she said quietly.

    They’d debated other safewords in the past, but it had mostly been academic, and they’d finally just reverted to something neither would forget in the heat of a fight. It was a very simple word.

   Spike let go instantly, letting her legs fall to the floor, and stood back as far away as the room would allow. Why’d he run so far away? “You can come over here,” she said listlessly. “I’m just done, is all.” 

   He came back on cat feet, nervous in the dim light. His yellow eyes were gone, and his blue ones looked concerned. He deftly removed the duct tape from her face and arms, being very gentle about it. “You okay?” he asked. The Irish accent was gone.

   “Yeah,” she said. She was very, very tired. Neither of them had come, but that didn’t really seem to matter. “I just want to go to sleep.”

   “Okay.”

   “Will you hold me?”

   “‘Course.”

   She shifted on the bed and got comfortable with a pillow. Spike shed his Angelus-style shirt and crept in beside her, folding her into his arms. She felt sleep wafting over her like music. Her muscles still ached. The thin scratches still stung. Some of the places he had hit her would probably have bruises by morning.

   And for the first time in weeks, she felt like she wasn’t in pain.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

   Buffy woke up early, in the thin blue light of the false dawn. Ordinarily she would have glanced at the clock, seen how early it was, and rolled back over, but she didn’t. She realized why after a minute. This was usually the time Spike crept into bed with her. Not only was Spike not in bed with her, but a moment of listening hinted he wasn’t in the apartment watching TV or anything, either.

   She always got nervous when her lovers weren’t there when she woke up. It was an annoying neurosis, but not one she’d been able to shake, not in a decade.

   She got up and checked out the living room. She was half hoping Spike was just reading or something, but no, he wasn’t there. Slayer senses (iffy though they were) had sort of told her that already. Spike was gone....

   His coat was gone, so he’d gone willingly. She checked the message pad by the phone. No note. Also odd.

   The sun was rising.

   She dialed his cell phone, and was, to her annoyance, not surprised when it rang on the side board, still plugged in to charge. Spike usually forgot the thing if he wasn’t working. Where the hell was he?

   The sun was rising....

   She was still tired. She wanted to go back to bed, but she was used to Spike being snuggly in the mornings, and instead he was out there somewhere. She half wanted to go look for him, but that was stupid. He was a grown man — person — vampire — whatever, he didn’t need a babysitter to chase after him if he escaped his crib. He didn’t need to ask permission to go for a walk or to a bar or something.

   Her leg jittered.

   She turned on the weather channel, half hoping for rain. Sunny day coming. The sun was rising.

   Fuck this. She turned the TV off again and considered a book. Too thinky. She finally landed on a fashion magazine, and reread the article about slimming strawberries, a diet fad she could really get behind.

   She kept losing her place in the magazine glancing up at the window. The sun was rising....

   Stupid Spike making her worry.

   False dawn went all the way to rosy dawn then to early golden morning before the door to the apartment opened and Spike came in, his coat over his head, his face slightly burned. He was carrying a brown paper bag, a little scorched. He was still smoldering.

   “Where the hell have you been?” Buffy demanded, throwing aside her magazine.

   “Nice to see you, too.”

   “What the hell were you thinking? It’s late!”

   He stared at her. “I was thinking, hey, check it out, not a prisoner. Can do what I want.”

   “I was worried. You left.”

   “It was early. You were asleep.”

   “Yeah! Early! Sun was rising, you idiot, of course I woke up! Where the hell were you?”

   Spike rolled his eyes. “I went for a walk, mum, did I need a hall pass?”

   “Well... yeah!” Buffy yelled.

   “Keep your voice down, Xander’s asleep,” Spike hissed.

   “Oh, for.... Of all the lame ass ways to shut me up.”

   “Fine. I’ll be blunt on it. Shut up!”

   “You shut up!”

   “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Spike demanded.

   “It’s broad day out there!” Buffy snapped, though she did try not to yell. “You think I don’t deserve a heads up when you’re out courting dust?”

   “Like I demand a detailed itinerary when you’re off on patrol!”

   “That’s  _ so _ not the same thing.”

   “You could die,” Spike said. “Same diff. I’ve been ducking the sun since before you were born, goldilocks, I can take a bit of a firewalk. I know what I’m doing.”

   “I didn’t say you didn’t!” Buffy snapped. “You just scared the crap out of me!”

   “Yeah, well, suck it up, sunshine!” Spike barked. “I’m not your bleedin’ child!”

   “And I’m not some dumb pet you can leash up and leave home.”

   “Oh, for — You know what, go to hell.” Spike tossed his paper bag on the counter and stalked off.

   “I’m not done with you!” Buffy called after him, annoyed.

   Spike raised his hand behind him in a V sign before he slammed the door to the bedroom.

   Buffy stood fuming for a moment, wondering whether she should chase him down and continue the argument. Spike had left the paper bag. She frowned, and opened it, expecting a carton of cigarettes and maybe some booze.

   Inside was a carton of strawberries, a smaller paper bag full of croissants, and a container of whipping cream.

   Buffy closed her eyes. What was she doing fighting with Spike? She shoved the bag in the fridge and knocked on the bedroom door. He didn’t answer, but she opened anyway. “Sorry,” she said.

   “Fuck off,” Spike said, almost more to himself than to her. He’d hung his coat up and was shoving stuff back in the closet.

   Buffy didn’t know what to say. “Thanks for the strawberries.”

   Spike scoffed. “Ever so welcome,” he said with irony.

   Buffy rubbed her forehead. “You were gone, I got scared.”

   He finally looked at her. “Was gonna make you breakfast,” he said. He shoved a box back into the closet. “Didn’t know how you’d look at me this morning.” He shrugged. “Like this apparently.”

   Buffy sighed. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

   “I know,” he said, though he didn’t really sound like he knew. “I just... saw you sleeping there. Thought you’d need breakfast in bed.”

   “Um. Yeah.” She felt bad. “Sorry. You just... you left. Scared me.”

   He glanced up. He knew about her stupid little neurosis. He was usually pretty careful about it. “Couldn’t stay still,” he said finally. “Needed a walk. Look, I gotta....” he gestured at the closet.

   “I know,” Buffy said. She didn’t know exactly what she knew. That he felt he had to fill it up again, forget the night before, or maybe just that he had to do something other than spat with her over minutiae. “Look, I....” 

   She didn’t know what to say. Something about the night before still lingered. She felt strangely guilty, and that made her feel resentful. It wasn’t his fault. This had been her idea. But there they were.

   She wondered what he was feeling.

   “I’m gonna take a shower,” she said.

   He went oddly still. “Okay.”

   He was pale — well, paler than usual — and his stance was tight. “You didn’t sleep, did you,” she asked.

   He didn’t deny it.

   “It’s been two days. You should try.”

   “I know,” he said.

   They stood awkwardly.

   “I love you.” She made herself say it.

   He looked up at her. “Love you, too.”

   Why did he sound so wistful? As if he was never going to see her again or something. It was weird.

   She turned and left and... they hadn’t touched. Dammit. Something was wrong, now. Double dammit.

   She tried to dismiss it and went to take her shower. She was bruised and listless. She wanted the feel of water running over her body. She turned on the water to heat up, hung up her robe, and looked at herself in the full length mirror.

   Her body was a crisscross of red lines, rough, artless patterns of simulated pain. There were bruises on her ribs, on her throat, on her upper arms where her “bones” had been “broken.” There was a blooming red mark still on her cheek where he’d slapped her. Fuck. She’d better put some makeup on, or Willow and Xander would freak, and she did not in a million years want to explain this to Dawn.

   She stepped closer to the mirror and stared at herself, her own green eyes glinting in her reflection as she searched for something. Maybe a reflection of her own soul. She had asked for this. And this, this... what Spike had carefully depicted without actually doing. It absolutely would not have been what she wanted.

   No. No matter what turned her on, no matter what her fantasies might twist in her, she didn’t want to be raped, tortured, and humiliated. What Angel would have wanted of her... what Angelus might have done to her. This absolutely wasn’t her. It had never been her.

   So what did she want? And why did she want it so badly? She thought she almost knew…. 

   The water heated up, and the mirror began to fog. She’d stood staring for a long time. What was wrong with her?

   She stepped in and took her shower, skipping her hair. She didn’t feel up to fussing with it today. It was a mess, though.  _ Spike grabbed her by it, dragging her across the floor.  _ Wow. She shook that off. It had actually been very clever of Spike, all his little almost-but-not-exactly depictions of absolute horror. It sure as hell got the point across.

   She went through it all again. And then again. How quickly he’d turned on her the moment the coast was clear. How he just tossed her around, manhandling her like a prop or something, not like a person. Scratches instead of slices. Lubricant instead of blood. Avoiding the business end of the blade. But god, what must he have in his head to do that so easily?

   She knew what he had in his head. That was never in question.

   She remembered what she’d felt like when Angel had to fake being soulless to try and feel out Faith and the Mayor. It had bothered her then, remembering what Angel had been like. Had she done it to herself again? Reminded herself how her boyfriend was a monster?

   No. She knew what Spike was. She knew what Angel was, too. Maybe, back then, her biggest problem was that she knew Angel and “Angelus” weren’t all that different from each other. She knew what Spike was like without a soul, how bad he could be, and how bad he sort of didn’t want to be. And she knew… she had always known… what Angel was. What he would become if he lost….

   Oh. 

   She stood there staring at nothing until the water started to go cold. How long had she been in there? She turned it off and used the towel to clear off the mirror, looking at her face murky in the steam. Her blurry reflection looked almost monstrous itself. Maybe... maybe that was why she was feeling guilty? Maybe it had less to do with how she was dating a man who had been a monster, and more to do with how she’d just made that man face once again the monster inside himself?

   And that was when the monster started screaming.

 

***

   He has the girl down on the ground, struggling against him, whimpering, sobbing, her face contorted in a rictus of terror. He tells himself it’s okay, that she wants this, she’s always wanted this. This is what he is, the angel of death, this is the proper shape of it all. Evil is good, good is nothing, and what he wants is all that ever mattered.

   But what he wants isn’t what he wants. There’s someone inside him, or over him, pressing down on him, lying atop of him as he holds down the girl. Hands grip around his wrists, force his arms to hold her down, move his body, control him like a marionette.

   It’s him, but it’s not him. He’s duct taped to the body behind him, moved like a puppet, and a stake is thrust up inside him. A stake — right. It’s Angel’s prick. It’s not painful, but it goes right through his body to his cock, forces it upright, and it’s moved like a joystick into the girl.

   The girl is Buffy. She’s Buffy, and he’s wrong, it’s not what she wants. It’s not okay. When he realizes it, he fights, struggling against the body guiding him, but she’s already penetrated, and the body he’s taped to laughs. 

   “Give it a rest, Spike m’lad,” Angelus hisses in his ear. “You know you can’t escape me. I’m inside you.”

   “No!” Spike struggles, but he can’t fight it. Angel pushes him down harder, bruising her, breaking her ribs. He can hear the crunch.

   She screams. She’s crying. “No! No, please, don’t do this! Spike! Please, please!” He remembers those sobbed words. He can’t escape them. He can never escape them.

   He’s going to lose her. If he can’t stop, she’ll be gone. Gone forever, he’ll never feel her again, never hear her laugh, the world will be without a Buffy, empty, barren, hellish, Buffyless.

   He can’t stop. There’s no stopping him now. There’s no one behind him now, the monster isn’t controlling him anymore, it  _ is _ him, and Buffy is fighting, but he can’t stop. He tears at her robe, forcing her body, and she tries to kick him off, but it doesn’t work. She doesn’t have the strength, because he weakened her. He remembers, he chained her up, twisted her muscles, he broke her. He broke Buffy! He broke her, and she went into the bathroom where  _ this  _ happened, and she can’t fight him, and now she’s keening and sobbing and struggling beneath him, and her body feels like heaven, and her sobs are the claws of hell, and the monster is inside him and he can’t fight it off.

   All he can do is revert back to what he knows. He starts with endurance, just hold fast, tense up, let the pain wash over you. But the pain isn’t pain, except it is, except it’s hers, and it won’t stop, and she’s melting beneath him, falling apart, he’s destroying her, he’s raping a blooded mass of melting Buffy, and no, no, if he doesn’t stop she’ll be gone, she’ll be gone, why can’t he stop, Dru, make it stop, Angel, don’t, get out of me, no, no, Angel, stop,  _ ahhh! _

   “Come on, Spike, Spike! Hey,  _ Spike! _ ”

   Someone was shaking him. He finally shook off the nightmare with a final scream and stared, wild-eyed up at Buffy.

   “Jesus, is he okay?” Xander asked. Spike glanced over to see Harris with boxers and bedhead, standing in the doorway and looking concerned.

   “Yeah, he’s fine,” Buffy said, with an air of  _ get the hell out. _

   “I haven’t heard that since Sunnydale.”

   Spike nearly groaned. He’d hoped Harris hadn’t heard those screams. Once he’d gotten past those early days with the soul he’d since managed to keep his nightmares silent.

   “You okay, man?” Xander asked, catching Spike’s eye.

   “Not ‘nough sleep,” Spike muttered, and rolled over, away from both Xander’s prying eyes and Buffy’s concerned face.

   “We’re good,” Buffy said.  

   “Okay. Anything I can do,” Xander added, before he mercifully went the hell away.

   Buffy stayed curled on the bed beside Spike and put her hand on his shoulder. “ _ Are _ you okay?” she asked.

   “Yeah,” he muttered. “Go finish your shower.”

   “Water went cold,” she murmured, sliding up so his head was level with her heart. 

   He could hear her heart beating. He closed his eyes. Stupid. This was stupid. He wanted to curl up into a grave and just disappear there. He’d hoped sleep would be an escape from how crappy he was feeling, but nope, just stupid nightmares. God damn bloody psyche.

   She caressed his shoulder with her thumb, and he could feel her lips in his hair. “I’ve pushed too far, haven’t I,” she whispered.

   Spike sighed and rolled onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow. “It’s not you,” he murmured. “It’s me.”

   “It was never just you,” Buffy whispered. “I’m sorry.”

   “Don’t,” he said, looking up at her. “Just don’t. I hate it when you blame yourself.”

   “You hate anything that hurts me,” Buffy said with a sad smile. “And I’ve been making you hurt me.”

   “You didn’t make me do anything, all right?” he snapped. “I just....” He groaned and buried his head again.

   Buffy’s fingers trailed over his scalp as she caressed his hair. “You didn’t enjoy last night at all, did you.”

   He looked back up. “Did you?”

   “No,” she said. “But you knew that.” She leaned back, a little world-weary. “That  _ was _ the point.”

   He sighed and closed his eyes.

   “What were you dreaming?” she asked.  

   Spike grunted. “Same old, same old.”

   “Random victim, or...?”

   He looked at her sardonically. Of course it wasn’t. She knew that. After last night, there was almost no way it could have been. He closed his eyes again and turned away. “Hope you’ve gotten something out of this,” he said quietly. “‘Cause I think I might be done.” He jammed the pillow more tightly under his head. He felt like crying, and that wouldn’t have been fair to throw at Buffy, either. It bugged him how easily he cried.

   “I think I have,” she said. “But I hope you’re not. ‘Cause last night aside, this has been kinda fun.”

   “Right,” he muttered. “Squelching down Traumatic Memory Lane.”

   She chuckled. “I’m sorry I let my nightmares hype up yours. But if it helps, I figured something out.”

   Spike glanced up.

   “I have problems saying yes.” She looked down, a bit bashfully. “I know, so what else is new? But... I think I’ve figured out why now.”

   He turned back and looked at her properly.

   “Well, maybe it’s not  _ why _ ,” she amended then. “Maybe it’s just me. But I know Angel didn’t  _ do _ it to me. Or that, you know, what he did... or what he probably did.” She stopped beating around the bush. “The truth that he probably raped me. That wasn’t what made me like this.”

   He really, really wanted to tell her to get to the sodding point, but he was bitter enough this morning. They’d fought enough already.

   “The thing is, I like sex,” she said simply.

   Spike blinked. He had to actively bite his tongue to keep from insulting her with the obvious.

   “But some part of me feels like I really shouldn’t,” she finally went on, after wrestling with a blush. “And... it’s not because of god or morality or anything, because I never felt like having sex was wrong. But the first time I had sex, it made a monster.” She shook her head then. “And then it kept on making monsters. Angel and Riley and... whatever that guy’s name was in college. It just kept being awful. But... it wasn’t awful, because it was fun. But the consequences....” She frowned, her forehead puckering in the cutest little wrinkles. “I think I somehow got it into my head that if I could have sex without it being my fault... then none of the consequences were mine. I didn’t have to take responsibility for what happened after.”

   She looked up at the ceiling, and her eyes were shining. Was she fighting off tears, too? “So... I don’t know. I had it in my head that if I had sex, I was courting evil. So part of me wants to be forced into it, so it’s not my fault. And part of me wants to force it, and just go ahead and  _ be _ evil.” She looked down. “Does that make sense?”

   “Yeah,” he said. “But you know it’s not evil.”

   “In my head I do, yeah,” she said. “My clit has other ideas, I guess.”

   He chuckled, and to his horror it choked into a tiny sob, and he covered his face. He kept it mostly locked down, but he hadn’t hidden it. She put her arm closely around him and nuzzled his head. “What’s the matter, baby?” she asked.

   “Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

   “Come on,” Buffy said. “You’ve been indulging me for weeks. What did I do to you?”

   “It’s what I did to you,” Spike said. “It’s always that. You know it is.”

   “When?”

   Oh, god, she had to narrow it down. How many times had he done something terrible to her? Was she counting? What counted and what didn’t? He still was never sure, their first affair had been so twisted and confused, and since then.... He was still sometimes confused. “That time,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “In your bathroom.”

   “Oh,” she said evenly. “ _ That  _ time.”

   He took in a breath, and damn, he hated that it was shaky.

   “Was that what you were dreaming?” she asked.

   “Yeah,” he said. “Only worse. And Angel was in it.” He closed his eyes. “In me,” he added.

   “That must have sucked.”

   “Uh, yeah,” he said, trying to sound casual. He was pretty sure he failed. “I....” He sighed. “You know I didn’t come there for that, right?”

   “I know,” she said.

   “I didn’t have a soul, but I really didn’t... I didn’t come there for that.”

   “I know.”

   The damn sob crept back. “I didn’t mean to!” Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck! _ He buried his head in the pillow and cringed against the damned memory.

   Buffy let him for a little while, mercifully not trying to make him dam up his emotions, and finally went back to stroking his head. “I didn’t, either,” she said.

   He glared up at her. “You didn’t do it,” he snapped, or tried to. It came out kind of sodden. “I should have listened, I was just....” Words burst out of him, words he hadn’t been saying for years. “I didn’t know what else to do! I wanted to talk, I just wanted to talk to you, you’d never  _ talk. _ You’d shut down, shut me out, the only way you’d communicate at all was through sex, I was just trying to reach you! You were always saying no, you were always stopping me without ever stopping me, it was like I couldn’t even hear it anymore, it never meant what it was supposed to mean, and I needed to reach you, I needed you to hear me, just hear me, I was going mad—” He cringed and snapped his mouth closed. It all sounded like he was blaming her, and he knew there was only one person to blame. And it wasn’t her.

   Buffy stared down at him. “I know,” she said. “I think I’d driven us both half insane even before the soul. Or the First.” She was pretty sure it was mostly the First and not the soul that had been the cause of Spike’s madness, though the soul had made him vulnerable. “You want to know why I had never stopped you before?”

   He gazed up at her, his eyes deep pools of questioning sorrow.

   “I was afraid you might actually stop.”

   That surprised him. He’d thought it had something to do with wanting to punish herself, or wanting men who would hurt her. Being afraid he was actually good enough to listen...?

   “I hadn’t ever wanted you to stop before. Not really,” she said. “I set us up for that moment. I know, I know, you don’t like it when I blame myself, and… you did screw up. You pushed too far. But I still set you up to push too far.” She shook her head. “We were doing dominance play and forcing each other without a safeword or any… communication, you’re right, I wouldn’t communicate. Stupid of me. Tightrope without a net, of course the moment one of us fell, we both got hurt.” 

  “It’s my fault,” he said. “I got used to reading you. I could read you so well….” He shook his head. “I couldn’t read you that night.”  

   Buffy smiled sadly. “You know... the thing about that night. That moment. It... it was scary. I think that was the only time I’ve ever been scared of you. Even when you were trying to kill me, even when you were full on evil. You had never scared me before.” Her eyes were distant. “Until that moment, you couldn’t ever really hurt me. I think it wasn’t until then, when you were there... and I was saying please.... It wasn’t until I realized how betrayed I felt, that I actually knew in my heart that I  _ did _ love you.” She closed her eyes and chuckled. “Which is pretty damn fucked up,” she said. “To only know it when it had to end. Buffy relationship tragedy all over.”

   Spike stared up at her. She had never said this before. They had never spoken about that night, not directly. It was too hard to address.

   “After you left....” She half laughed. “After you bolted, too fast to even remember your coat... I sat there for... god. I don’t know how long. I felt everything and nothing. Hate and rage and guilt and despair. I felt betrayed. And tangled up in the betrayal was that love that I hadn’t wanted to feel....” She sniffed. “I  _ had _ felt it, and I hated myself for feeling it, and I hated myself for not embracing it, and I hated you for making me love you, and breaking it.” She shook her head. “And I kept seeing your face. You have no idea the look on your face…. You looked just as confused and violated as I felt. It was like we’d both been attacked by the same demon.”

   She rubbed the tears from her face and looked down on him. “And I know... I know that was the moment when you saw the monster inside you. The moment that made you decide you couldn’t be that anymore.” Her voice went down to a whisper. “And I’m going to tell you something I don’t think I could ever have said, until now.”

   He stared into her.

   “That moment. It was, without a doubt, one of the worst moments of my life. And the big, scary secret... is that I think... it may be one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

   “Buffy....”

   “Shut up,” she murmured. “It’s confusing and complicated but... that was the moment that made you see... that turned you completely from the darkness. And I hate to think about what you went through after that, and it scared me and it hurt me, and it hurt you and... I don’t know, maybe even broke you. But it made you  _ change. _ It made you want to go become better. It made you fight back against yourself. One moment of seeing the beast, and you knew... you knew what you had to become.” She looked down on him. “And what you became... is a man I can trust completely. A man who understands me. Who knows the darkness in me and loves it as much as the light. A man I can lose my temper with, and it’s not a big deal. A man who would sacrifice everything to do what had to be done.” She caressed his cheek. “A man I love more and more every day. My equal, and my opposite. My own personal champion. The echo of my own soul.” She smiled. “You.”

   He didn’t know how to respond to that. “You shouldn’t have had to feel it,” he finally said.

   She shrugged. “Maybe there could have been a better way,” she said. “But that was what happened. And I love that it happened.” She frowned. “I know, I hated it, but... I love it, too.” She chuckled. “Which is you and me in a nutshell, innit?” she said with a grin.

   Spike stared at her, filled with so much love he couldn’t even respond. 

   “Well… say something,” she said nervously. 

   Spike didn’t. Instead he surged up to kiss her.

   Buffy grabbed him, kissing him back, dragging him over her as she mewled happily. The night before hadn’t actually been particularly sexy, and she wanted to make up for that. She grabbed for him, reaching between his legs, and did not find the welcome she quite expected.

   Unfortunately, the miasma of Spike’s nightmare still hung over him. He paused, hanging back, slightly sick. “Sorry,” he said. It wasn’t her, not really. It must have been the robe she was wearing. It was not, of course, the same robe, but after the events the night before, then Buffy saying she was going into the bathroom to shower, coupled by the dream. Yeah. It was going to take him some snuggling and maybe some more pillow talk about trivialities before he could banish it easily enough to go anywhere. Bloodied melted mass of screaming Buffy.... He shuddered.

   Buffy pulled her hand back, since she knew that shudder. He didn’t usually scream out in his nightmares anymore, but he still had them, and she knew he had a hard time escaping them. Both of them were huge, tangled messes of dark history and terrible mistakes. And right now he was thinking of that moment... that turning point.

   But it had turned out to be such a good thing, ultimately.

   She was thoughtful. Maybe... maybe it was time to nip this completely. Maybe it was time they just owned it. “Come on,” she said.

   “Huh?”

   She got up out of the bed and took Spike by the hand. 

   “What are we doing?” he asked.

   “You’re coming with me,” she said. He sighed, then pulled himself out of the bed. She dragged him across the apartment and into the bathroom, confusing him no end. They didn’t have many sexy-times in the bathroom, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was their mutual hang-ups over that one stupid moment in Sunnydale years before.

   Buffy closed the door and locked it behind her. Then, without warning, she pushed him up against it and lunged for his throat, biting at him with considerable strength.

   “Ow! Hey! What—”

   “Stop me,” she whispered in his ear as she rubbed at his groin. She went back to his throat, kissing and biting, her other hand grabbing at his wrist as she forced her knee between his, keeping him somewhat immobilized.

   Spike’s free hand grabbed at her shoulder as he gasped. She was kind of hurting him. “What are you — Buffy — ung.” She was hurting, and it was starting to work, and that was starting to make him uncomfortable. Bathroom.

   “I said,” she said, her teeth nibbling down his chest between words, “stop me.” She bit at his nipple.

   “I—” Oh. Spike paused as he realized, with a surge of amused fondness, exactly what she was doing. His face broke into a smile as she clawed at his chest. Okay. God, she was cute. “Safe,” he said quietly.

   Buffy let go and backed off. She grinned at him in her mussed robe and damp hair, the room still moist and steamy from her earlier shower. She shrugged, her arms outstretched. Here we are.

   Everything was good now.

   He chuckled, his head down bashfully. God, she knew him so damn well. He looked back up at her under his brow, unable to stop grinning, half in embarrassment, half in delight. She cocked her head and bit her lip provocatively. With a flick of her eyebrow she said, “Your turn.”

   He grinned evilly. Then he moved, fast, full vampire speed, caught her around the waist, and pushed her down against the wall. She squealed, half laughing, and sank to the tile as Spike growled at her throat.

   “You gonna make me feel it?” she whispered in his ear.

   “Gonna do the best I can,” he breathed back. He straddled her, pressing her back against the wall, his cock rubbing against her stomach. The knot on her robe’s sash dug into his thigh. She was pliant and responsive, and his cock thickened. He looked down at her as she hummed provocatively. “You gonna fight me?” he asked finally, as she was nothing but compliant.

   She opened her eyes and gazed up at him. “You want me to?” she whispered.

   There was a beat. His dream haunted him, the past haunted him, but really, what was the reason for that? He waited a moment, listening to her heart, her green eyes glittering as she leaned against the wall tile. They didn’t have to let this own them anymore. Not any of it. Not ever.

   “Yeah,” he said.

   Her hands went up, pushed against his shoulders, and they were wrestling. It was delightful. He had to fight against her, his muscles straining, adrenaline surging, the fight circling back down to his cock to make every movement just that much more exciting. He grabbed her by the robe and dragged her to him, forcing her mouth into a kiss.

   She even fought the kiss. He had to press her mouth, force his tongue between her teeth, invade her body as she squealed deep in her throat.

   He could smell her arousal.

   Her robe ripped, a pale white noise in the echoing bathroom, and what would it have been like if that  _ had _ been his goal that night? It would have been so different. It wouldn’t have been about her at all.

   With a sudden lurch he twisted her over, forcing her onto her knees, hoisting up her robe. The knot on the sash held, but it came wide open otherwise, leaving her front completely exposed. Her breasts dangled over the cold tile while he shoved himself between her knees, pushing his cock up against her exposed pussy.

   “You feel it?” he growled at her. He plunged inside. “You feel me?”

   She didn’t respond except with a moan, unable to keep fighting. Felt too damn good. His hand went around and cupped her breast, and he bit at the back of her neck like a screwing cat. She surged beneath him, pumping up against him, and then wrestled and fought him again, scrabbling backwards until they were against the door again. It creaked and rattled on the hinges as Spike kept thrusting in her, completely focused on his own enjoyment.

   Which, of course, turned her on even more.

   The muscles weakened in her arms and she collapsed on the cold tile, her butt still in the air as Spike worked in her, the rest of her a melted puddle of pleasured Buffy. She did own this. Fuck that it was the bathroom. Denial, response, enjoyment, her body, his. Nothing held her anymore. No trauma, no rape, no casual violation of her body or her consent could dictate how she felt about things. Everything inside her was hers.

   She was flying.

   Spike came suddenly, hard, surprising him. He had meant to keep it contained, draw it out, but she’d melted beneath him, not as his dream had suggested, but in sheer moaning pleasure. It was so hard to keep from reacting when she fell apart around him like that.

   He tossed her away from him as if she was merely an empty victim, fell over gasping, and looked down on her. “Your turn,” he dared to say.

   Buffy groaned and rolled over, glaring at him. “Oh, you bastard,” she muttered. How was she supposed to do this when she was a quivering mass of loosely connected soft soaring Buffy-bits? And she hadn’t even come yet! How unfair was that?

   Spike grinned even more evilly than before, and Buffy growled low with annoyance. She hauled herself up, got tangled in her robe, and yanked out the knot, letting the garment fall to the ground. “What am I supposed to do now?” she demanded. She grabbed him by the hair, the short little curls tight in her fingers, and hauled him close to glare at him. “Do you need to be punished, bad man?”

   “Probably.”

   She was short on tools, so she just hit him.

   He groaned with something like relief, and so she hit him again. She knocked his head against the wall, tossed him down on the ground, and straddled him.

   She had considered doing other things to him, but it felt too good with him under her. She took hold of his throat, just because she knew he liked it, and then just rubbed her clit along his damp cock, humping him steadily.

   He gazed up at her, his eyes glazed with pleasure. “Make me into what you want,” he whispered to her.

   She couldn’t help but smile. “I just want you.”

   They kissed, and it wasn’t forced, and it wasn’t hard, and it didn’t matter if it was or wasn’t. They knew what they wanted from each other, they knew how hard they could go, and they knew how to make it all understood. They’d made it. There was nothing at all separating them anymore. The field was clear.

   Buffy came with a low groan and collapsed over him. She bit gently at his chest a few times, and he shifted over, angling her carefully onto her fallen robe to partially protect her from the chill tile. She hugged him close with one arm, nestling into his armpit.

   “You really are amazing,” he whispered. “Everything I could have wanted.” He chuckled. “Even things I never knew I wanted.”

   “Mm.”

   He was thoughtful for a long moment. Then, almost unconnectedly, he started to talk. “You know... you know when I said the first time he took me, he was torturing me?”

   Buffy looked up. “Angel?”

   “Yeah. You know I said it wasn’t a big deal?”

   “Yeah.”

   He frowned. “It wasn’t, really. Not compared to how the whole thing started, with him claiming Dru right in front of me, and then beating me up over it when I....” He closed his eyes. “It was supposed to be just us. I thought we belonged to each other. I thought he... got that. That we were partners, and she was mine, and we were....”  He shook his head. “Betrayal on top of betrayal.”

    “Betrayal sucks,” Buffy whispered. 

    “The beating made sense to me, though,” he said. “You cane children when they’re wrong, or to teach them, I knew that.”

    “That’s not—”

    “Back then, they did,” he reminded her. “Victorian morality beat little boys. That was what teachers did, or older boys, I understood that. Angelus was my teacher, so, okay. He could hurt me.”

    “Victorian England was messed up,” Buffy said. 

    Spike shrugged. It was normal for him. 

    “Thing is,” he said, “it only got weird when it went to rape.” He chuckled, his eyes distant. “I really didn’t have a sodding clue what was happening. I couldn’t understand what he was doing at first. I was beaten, stripped, beaten some more, drained of blood, and then... then I felt him behind me, and it was just... it was just  _ happening _ . He was just… doing it suddenly.”

    This sounded oddly familiar to Buffy. 

    “I  _ really _ didn’t understand,” he went on. “I was so damn naive, it didn’t even occur to me that someone could do that. I didn’t know what it was inside me. Thought it was a stake or something, I....” He shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t  _ that _ time.” He took a deep breath. “It really was just one more torture, but it was so confusing, it stayed with me.” 

   Buffy snuggled deeper into his chest. “But all that evil….” she said. “Didn’t the evil make sense?”  

   “Nah, the sexual bit wasn’t instinctive with the turning, only the killing and the blood. I didn’t care about morals, so I was willing to shag without getting married, but… that was just human leftovers. I’d wanted to shag as a man. Everything else I had to learn.” He pursed his lips. “You know, I think that was the first time I realized I  _ wasn’t _ a man anymore. I was some  _ Other Creature _ . Dru didn’t do it, killing didn’t do it, evil didn’t do it. But the rape. That drove it home. I was something else now. Was never really the same again.”

   She was touched by the confession. It showed such vulnerability, and such trust. 

   She gave it back. 

   “The first time he took me,” she said, “he was so gentle.” She closed her eyes. “We’d been getting so heated and so hyped up, and I was convinced it was.... Well. No,” she said honestly. “I wasn’t convinced. I didn’t think it was inevitable, I hadn’t thought about it at all. I mean, I’d thought about it. But I hadn’t  _ decided _ on it. And I... I didn’t have time to make a decision.”

   She shook her head. “We didn’t talk about it. We’d  _ never _ talked about it before, not about the act itself. And he started…  _ we _ started. But he never slowed down. We just... he just kept going.  _ He _ knew what he was doing.” She frowned. “And I really didn’t.”

   Spike brushed the hair out of her face with a delicate finger, but she didn’t like meeting his eyes. “He never asked, is this all right, should we go on, are you okay with this? He didn’t ask if I was ready.”

  “Were you?” Spike asked. 

  Buffy scoffed. “I don’t know. I still don’t know! And I remember part of me was just... swooning and falling under him, but I remember part of me looking on, inside my brain, and saying in my mom’s voice,  _ Do you really think you’re ready, Buffy? _ And... I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have time to try and answer. He had me down on the bed and he was inside me.... I didn’t even have time to look at him.”

   She frowned. “I remember being annoyed by that, that I didn’t have time. I’d never really seen a naked man. I... I would have liked to explore. I would have liked to have... have had  _ some _ idea what was happening. I mean, I knew what was happening, I knew it was  _ sex _ , but I knew so little about it beyond that. In some way I couldn’t articulate, I felt like it should be  _ different _ .”

   “How?”

   She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. I think… I felt like I couldn’t stop him?” She frowned. “I mean, I  _ could _ , I didn’t think him evil then, but… it felt as if it would be rude to stop him, almost. Against girlfriend code, or... or lying or something, because I did love him. I did... I did want him, but... I never decided. I didn’t decide against it, either. It was just... sort of  _ happening _ . I was never given the choice to make the decision.”

   She closed her eyes. “It hurt. I mean, of course, it did, but… not just the virginity thing. The weird… confusedness of everything about it hurt, sort of. I wanted to know more about what I was doing before it just, it just  _ happened. _ But there it was... it was happening. It had happened. It had happened before I even really knew what was happening, and.... and I remember going to sleep and thinking,  _ I guess... I guess we’ll just talk about it later. _ ” She sighed. “But of course later never came.”

   Spike stared down at her, her head nestled on his shoulder. “He never gave you the choice, either?”

   She glanced up. “I didn’t say no.”

   Their eyes locked for a long time. “You never said yes.”

   She finally shook her head.

   They lay there on the cold tile, two victims of the same creature, both messed up and violated and tortured and abandoned, both suffering inner scars, both wrestling with their own demons. They’d found each other. They both understood.

   A heavy, steady knock on the bathroom door finally broke their reverie. “Excuse me?” came Xander’s voice through the paneling, stark with annoyance. “Can I have the bathroom, please?”

   They smothered laughter. “Want to bet he needs another cold shower?” Spike asked low.

   Buffy’s laughter broke. “We’ll be right out, Xander!” she called through it.

   “Finally,” Xander muttered. “I should move in with Willow.”

   Buffy handed Spike a towel and slipped her robe back on — and hoped Xander wouldn’t realize it was ripped. “Because kinky lesbian sex will be so much easier to cope with,” she said opening the door.

   Xander rolled his eyes as he stalked in past them. “I know, rub it in. I need a girlfriend.” He closed the door on them and started the shower.

   “You still feeding me strawberries?” Buffy asked Spike.

   “If you’ll whip up the cream,” Spike said.

   “We already did that,” Buffy said with a naughty twitch of her eyebrow.

   “Hey!” Xander shouted from the bathroom. “Is all the hot water gone?”

***    

 

_ Ring. _

   Buffy sat quietly. Unlike the last time she’d dialed this number, she wasn’t nervous, and she wasn’t confused.

_ Ring. _

   She wondered what was taking him so long to answer. If he had a modern phone, the damn thing should have caller ID. Maybe he really didn’t want to talk to her. That was okay. What she had to say could be said in a voice mail, anyway. She didn’t have any more questions for Angel. He had never held any answers, anyway.

_ Ring. _

   No. There was nothing she needed to hear from him. Now was the time for her to talk, and him to just listen.

_ Ring. _

   “Hello?” Finally.

   “It’s me,” Buffy said evenly.

   “Oh. Buffy....”

   “Hello, Angel.”

   “Um. Hi....”

   He was just as awkward as he had been the last time she called. She didn’t feel awkward at all. She felt strangely calm.

   “I just wanted to call and tell you something.”

   “Oh?”

   “Yeah.” Buffy paused, to make sure he was listening. “I don’t forgive you anymore,” she said. “Not for any of it.”

   “Oh.”

   “Not any of it. Not the stalking or the hiding information or the lies or the manipulation of my feelings. I don’t forgive you for targeting a teenage girl based on your supposed destiny. I don’t forgive you for any of the things you did without a soul. Or with one.”

   “I....”

   “Any of them.”

   She heard him take in a deep breath. “Okay.”

   Okay. She nodded to herself. He had heard her. “So. I don’t need to punish you. If something happens and we need to work together, we probably can. You were right about that. It’s done. But you’re not forgiven.”

   “I understand.” He was silent on the other line for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

   “You should be. If you feel guilty at all... that’s good.”

   “I know.”

   “Also, one more thing,” she said. “Spike was always a better man than you. Even without a soul.”

   Another long silence. “Oh.”

   “Just thought you should know that. Goodbye, Angel.”

   “I.... Buffy, I....”

   “Goodbye.” She quietly turned off the phone and set it down.

   There. She looked up at Spike, who had been watching this exchange just as he had the first one. He reached out for her, and she reached back. They joined hands over the table and smiled at each other. They had gone with each other to their darkest corners and they both knew what lurked there. They’d looked over the edge together.

   And they’d learned how to fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who stuck with this complicated, sometimes squicky little fic. I know it was a very odd one, and I want to thank bewildered and ZabJade again for helping me beta through it as it hit controversial subjects, complicated canon corners, and unpleasant and sometimes disturbing content. And thanks again to Carrie-Ann for daring a banner. Just thanks everyone!


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